


The Fallout Confessional

by MattieisHeer (Ginger_Villiers)



Category: Camp Camp (Web Series)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Angst, Body Horror, Cannibalism, Danvid, Depression, F/F, F/M, Human Experimentation, M/M, Past Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Post-Nuclear War, Recreational Drug Use, Underage Drinking, necrophilia but lowkey, nuclear mutation, wasteland and fallout stuff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-31
Updated: 2018-09-04
Packaged: 2019-03-11 17:12:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 14
Words: 54,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13528848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ginger_Villiers/pseuds/MattieisHeer
Summary: David wants his family,Max just wants his friends;Jasper’d do anything to feel safe,And Daniel wants revenge.





	1. End//

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a couple years since I've tried to write a legit fanfiction so I've got to get back into the swing of things, I guess. The trio is 14/15 years old in this, and respectively, David and Daniel and everyone else is late 20s/early 30s instead of early 20s.
> 
> Enjoy.

 

If they were caught, they were going to be so utterly fucked.

But the chances they would get caught were slim, and it’s not like anything worse was in for them other than a grounding if they did get caught. So Nikki and Max sprinted through the forest-lined back fields, crushing tall grasses and wildflowers beneath their dirty converse. Max’s breath shrunk to a low rasp, and he struggled to keep up with his enthusiastic green-haired friend - but he refused to slow down until they’d reached the sweet, sweet shade of the trees.

“C’mon, Max! You can do it! We’re almost there!” Nikki shouted encouragingly, dashing (finally!) into the cover of the woods. In one hand she held a sloshing bottle of vodka - in the other, a dingy flip phone that looked like it was on the verge of falling apart.

Upon reaching the forest, Max promptly collapsed on the ground and started to dry-heave.

“Nik -- I, ah -- never again,” he managed through heaving breaths. Nikki just laughed.

“You should get in shape. Getting a lil’ bit chubby there, tiger. I wou--” She was cut off by the buzz of her black flip phone, which she immediately picked up. “Neil? Where are you?”

Max recovered his breath and took his hoodie off as Nikki talked on the phone. It was one of those early fall evenings, the kind that hinted at lingering summer warmth and magic. The kind that you read about in stories or see in movies. The kind that reminds you of life and daydreams and being in the moment.

Neil, red-faced, broke through the last backyard and began his own sprint through the field, his phone still in his hand from talking to Nikki and a half-filled plastic water bottle in his other hand. Nikki looked on. An amused smirk graced her lips, and Max sneered, watching him run and then crash into the trees.

As per usual, Neil immediately started to bark at them. “Why’d you have to choose the forest that makes it so we have to pass _right behind_ David’s house? You know how risky that is, right? What if he’d caught us again?”

“So? He’s not the worst person in the world to get caught by. At least it wouldn’t be someone random and creepy.” Max shrugged reassuringly. This wasn’t true, though. David would 100% march him to his foster parents if the friends were found and tell them everything that they’d been doing, which would pretty much be the end of the world if the foster family decided to get rid of him. But for the moment, Max just didn’t care.

“Fine.” Neil’s smile seemed dim, his chest heaving with the same exhaustion that Max had dealt with just moments earlier. He eyed the bottle of vodka that Nikki was holding. “Is that all you’ve got? Why’d you have me bring the water bottle?”

Nikki looked offended. “Of course not! Here, Max, bring out the _good_ shit.”

Max shoved his hand into his boot and pulled out a cheap pen along with a plastic bag filled with dried out greenish buds. He waved it around. Neil nodded cooly.

“Where’dya get it this time?”

Max looked nonchalant. “Scraped some off a new dealer.”

Both Nikki and Neil gaped at him.

It’s Neil who speaks first. “Max -- are you sure that’s a good idea? I mean, what happened to Ered’s supplier?”

Max scowled at him. “I ran out of cash, okay? Ered’s stuff is stronger, so she prices it up. I just wanted to get more than .5g. I don’t get allowance until next week."

Neil continued to look dubious, but Nikki shrugged it off and handed Max a purple lighter decorated with peeling heart stickers. Max assembled a makeshift pipe, chewing off the ends of the pen with his famed unusually sharp teeth and jamming the weed inside before lighting up. As custom, the first hit was always Nikki’s, because the lighter they always used was hers. It was simply tradition.

“Where are we going today?” Nikki said, passing the bottle and lighter to Neil. “Are we just gonna stay here?”

In all truth, Max knew that they were still too close to their neighborhood for comfort. He motioned for them to start trudging deeper into the woods as Neil took a hit. “Come on, guys. I found this cool spot a little ways up the mountain. You can see fucking _everything_ from there. And after that, we can go raid the convenience store. You guys down?” Max asked, but it wasn’t really a question.

Nikki and Neil followed Max wherever he went. They were inseparable. Whatever trouble that Max was getting into -- well, you could bet that Nikki and Neil were a part of it, however outlandish and dangerous.

Everyone nodded.

Max lead them to a sort of gentle cliff. The trees parted and gave way to the sunset and +small neighborhood at the base of the mountain -- it was picturesque. Passing the weed and the vodka around, the friends breathed in the evening air. The sunset was perfect that night. Purple and dark oranges streaked the sky like a modern painting. The darkness under the trees gave way to fireflies. The mountain air, tinged with the last warm hints of summer, felt fresh in their lungs and cool against their skin. And at that moment, high and tingly and drunk, Max almost felt alive.

“I’m craving Reese's. Let’s go down to the convenience store and get some chocolate.” Neil said. Nikki nodded in agreement.

Shrugging, Max conceded. “We’re about out of weed anyway.”

The friends sprinted down the mountain, through the woods, tripping on roots and ivy and laughing over stupid ideas that they shouted over each other. Nikki chucked the makeshift pipe and the drained bottle of vodka into a pond as they ran into town.

The City of Lingua. It wasn’t a city, despite the name -- it was _hardly_ a town. An obscure community of people scattered around the base of a small mountain in the upper peninsula of Michigan, everyone was tightly knit and knew each other well enough. One high school, one grocer, only a couple of gas stations, shitty phone service; it was the middle-of-nowhere backwater that no one had the desire to be trapped in. However, living there wasn’t actually that bad. It was quiet, with dark nights and overcast days. The mayflies weren’t even unbearable, even if they did go crazy during the summer and every pond, bird bath, and pool was covered with dead fly corpses. A quiet, mountain, misty town.

Even though things were generally uninteresting, Lingua had one secret. One that not even all of the residents knew about. See, carved into their mountain was a fallout bunker. It was rotting and unused, built during cold war times and faded from the new generation’s memories. Just an obscure part of town history that no one really mentioned or told others, and much less told any strangers that stopped by, or more likely, got stranded and were forced to stay there.

Nikki, Max and Neil meandered through the freshly paved streets and brick houses of Lingua, in the general direction of their favorite convenience store, Moon Deli #1. It was your typical convenience store -- greasy, with stained and sunbleached posters in the windows and oily yellow lighting. Outside there were a couple of rusting gas pumps, with grotty screens that probably hadn’t been checked in years. The friends burst into the shop. Usually there was a bell that announced their arrival, but it seemed to be out of order, and there was no sound other than the feet of three teenager shuffling around. The woman behind the counter didn’t look at them; she was reading a People magazine that she’d snached from the checkout and didn’t really care.

Max exchanged eye contact with Neil and Nikki, nodding gently at them. They went over to the drink machine and started to cause trouble and mess with it, wasting soda and ice without a cup and paying. They laughed and chatted, letting the beverages fall into the drip tray uninhibited. Then, Neil started to eat the ice, crunching it loudly. The woman behind the counter didn’t notice at first. Max crouched down in one of the isles and started to shove bags of candy up the sleeve of his sweatshirt as quietly as possible.

“Hey! Hey, you!” The lady behind the counter finally started to shout, and Max’s muscles tensed as anxiety rocked his frame for a split second until he remembered she was yelling at Nikki and Neil. Marijuana made him jumpy for some reason, even though the rumors had told him it was supposed to help him relax. “You can’t do that unless you’ve bought a drink!”

Nikki spoke first, seeing as Neil tended to freeze up in situations like this. “Uhhh…”

Max hurriedly finished hiding a last bag of swedish fish before standing slowly and casually. The woman didn’t even notice him. _Perfect_. He had a hard time getting his thoughts together, but he smiled as Neil went up to the counter, apologizing and pulling a dollar out of his pocket to cover the drink costs, which gave Max the cover to slip out of the shop, unnoticed--

\--Right into _fucking_ David.

“Max!” David cried joyfully, ignoring the disgruntled grimace on Max’s face. “How’re you doing? How’s school?”

“Uh - David, I can’t really talk, I have to get, uh--” Max averted his eyes from David, mumbling so not to blow his weed and alcohol-laced breath straight into the other’s face and give his illicit activities away. Glancing past David, Max saw his shitty old Toyota lines up next to one of the pumps. He was only getting gas.

“You...don’t want to talk?” David replied hesitantly, his smile dropping slightly.

Nikki and Neil came through the door moments later, giggling and talking about giraffe tongues. They stopped short when they saw David’s slight frown, which lead to a stony silence, one the teens didn’t dare break for fear that they would get caught just because of the smell hanging on their clothes or the lingering bitterness on their breath. “Max? You’re acting strange…” David stuck his head closer to Max, sniffing loudly. His eyes widened.

Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.

“Max, have you been smoking marijuana again? And is that-? Alcohol?” He asked loudly, his hands on his hips. Max didn’t reply. He kept his arms pressed tightly to his sides, knowing that the moment he let go, 15 dollars worth of candy would come tumbling out. “Max? Max, answer me.”

Nikki was frozen behind him. Neil was inching, centimeter by centimeter, fearfully to the side. Max knew he had to think fast, but his mind was sluggish and intoxicated and it was all too much--

“-No,” he said.

 _Then he fucking ran_.

Candy and Little Debbie’s donuts falling out of the sleeves of his sweatshirt, running like all hell was breaking loose, Max sprinting away from David was a pretty majestic sight. And of course, Nikki and Neil were loyally behind him. They didn’t look back to see if David was following him (he wasn’t). Or if he’d gone into the shop (he hadn’t).

Max just ran. Ran into the woods, and farther. Until he couldn’t anymore, and he had lost himself in the haze of trees. And when he stopped, his friends stopped. And they all sat there.

“What was I thinking?” Max shouted into the trees. “Going into a store while obviously high? I’m so fucking stupid!”

“...Max…” Nikki said gently, putting a hand on his turned back.   
“It wasn’t your fault.” Neil blurted. “I suggested it. It’s not your fault.”

There was a long silence.

“David’s gonna tell my foster parents. They’re gonna kick me out, they’re really gonna kick me out…” Max slumped against the nearest tree. “What if I get sent to a home far away from here? Somewhere where I’ll never get to see anyone I know again? You guys, Preston, Ered, Strong - you’re the only decent people in this world.” He choked, wiping his eyes furiously as they started to water. “It’s a miracle I’ve been in this one home for more than a few years. If I get kicked out - they’ll send me to a fake life with a perfect family that doesn’t want a delinquent. And on. And on. Until I’m 18 and they dump me out on the street. I’m fucked. I’m so, absolutely, utterly _fucked_.”

“Max, I’m so sorry.” Nikki said gently. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but everything is going to be ok, I’m sure of it-”

She was cut short by the sound of both Neil’s and her phone ringing Neil ignored his dad for Nikki to pick up her own phone. Nikki was shaky; you could tell that even though her mother was very lenient, she was still nervous. 

“Hey, ma. What do you need?”

Nikki always spoke like that. _What do you need? What do you need me to do for you?_ She’d grown up to be rough-and-tumble as she was when she’d been younger, but with a much bigger heart.

Her faced dropped into a more serious frown. “Ma, what’s going on?”

“Okay. I will. I’ll bring both of them, is that okay?”

“We’ll be right there.”

Nikki snapped her phone shut. “Guys, we need to go home. Now. You know Candy - she’s never serious, but she was dead serious telling us we needed to get home immediately. I think something’s wrong, I think we should go home. I know she has a thing where she lies, but...I don’t think so, this time.”

The sun was seriously setting then, and the sky darkened.

Neil’s dad called him again. Neil pushed ignore, again. “Do you think David told her this fast about the weed? And the liquor?”

“No, my mom doesn’t care about it when I do that stuff. As long as I’m not hurting anyone.” Nikki said, her tone low and solemn. She glanced over at Max, who had his back turned from them and wasn’t speaking. “Max, it’ll be alright. We just need you to come home now, okay? You don’t have to go to your foster home. You and Neil can stay with me for the night. I just - hearing my mom like that - I’m scared. I think we should go home.”

Max shifted his weight onto both feet. On one hand, he didn’t have a phone after his foster family found out he was using it to set up drug deals before, and he had no way of knowing what was going on. On the other...well, if they _were_ about to be punished, the cost would be too much for Max to face. He wiped his snot and tears on the sleeve of his sweatshirt, finally turning around to face his friends.

“You guys go,” his voice was faint. “I’ll come later. I...I just need some time to myself.”

Nikki bit her lip and held onto the shoulder of Max’s sweatshirt, like letting go would be against her better judgement.

“Are you sure?” Neil asked him nervously. Max gave him a silent nod.

Nikki and Neil made eye contact, and silently agreed to let him be. They trudged off back through the woods, leaving Max to calm down.

As soon as they were out of Max’s hearing range, Nikki started to run.

“Nikki, stop running! Why are you-- we’ve done enough physical activity for one day.” Neil huffed, grabbing the back of her tee-shirt and pulling her back into a walk.

“I don't think we should have left Max. It’s getting dark, Neil. What if something is happening?” Nikki sounded like she was on the edge of a panic attack.

“He said he wanted to be alone. I think we made the right decision.”

“I know, but he doesn’t have a phone, and we can’t reach him…”

“He’ll be fine.” Neil said. “Max is tough, but he doesn’t want us to be around when he’s emotional. We should just let him work through all his shit.” He offered his hand for Nikki to hold.

Nikki still sounded hesitant, but she took Neil’s hand and started to walk again. “Yeah...you’re right. Max’ll be fine, I’m sure this is nothing.”

 

They were within eyeshot of Nikki’s street when the bomb sirens started to go off.


	2. Sink//

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is super confusing and not that well written but heyyy 5000-ish words in 48 hours isn't bad?? Anyway sorry this chapter is so slow but a lot of the info is needed ig
> 
> This is really badly written oh god but I tried

It was safe to say, generally speaking, that David was a good man. 

He went to church on Sundays, making small talk afterward with his wife and son. He volunteered his time in the evenings working at the homeless shelter and food pantry. He went back to Camp Campbell every summer to help give more poor, miserable children the best summer anyone could squeeze out of the barely funded camp. And if you asked, he would talk about how it’s always worth it to help those in need, and how he loved his wife, Annabeth, and how the children that he taught at summer camp were a light in his life. Reliable. Hardworking. Trustworthy. 

If you asked anyone in town, they’d say that he acted boundlessly energetic and happy. Only his wife would hesitate. 

David and Annabeth had a platonic relationship. As much as they hugged and slung arms around each other’s shoulders, you would never see them get any more affectionate than that. Why? Because it just so happened that they were both gay. 

Childhood friends, their marriage was just a plot to make their parents happy. There was no real loyalty to each other, and even though they were still close friends, David found himself sleeping more and more often on the floor of his son’s room than in his own bed because he was too kind to tell Annabeth to sleep with her lady friends elsewhere. Seeing Annabeth date so many girls - David never really found anyone. He would look at the boys on TV and in magazines, and the other dads around town, but everyone seemed settled. And, if you asked him to tell you honestly, David would tell you that  _ nothing  _ seemed quite as interesting as before, and if it was up to him, he would never wake up in the first place.

So, he busied himself with taking care of their infantile son, Jonah, and running the only daycare in the area. And he smiled. He smiled at everyone because he just wanted them to smile back, to feel like he was making even a small difference in the day to day. 

This continued until one fateful summer away from home. The summer he met Daniel. 

Daniel was a convict. He’d attempted murder. His skin was too pale, he hated both children and nature, and the only way he’d gotten to David’s godforsaken camp in the first place was to finish off his community service hours. He was blatantly manipulative. He had a mouth that could talk its way around God. And, to top it off, since David was the one who had to write his progress reports and confirm his hours with the law, Daniel was 100% using him to make sure that everything written about him was positive. 

But Daniel was  _ something _ . A distraction. And he was just so  _ easy,  _ like the feeling of giving up. So David played the part. He played Daniel like he played everyone else - as a naive, buoyant, childlike white twink. If you didn’t know him well, you’d assume he hadn’t grown up at all. 

They put together the shittiest makeshift romance that the world had ever seen, but they made it work. Then, the summer was over, and they were over, and  _ David  _ was over.

 

26 Weeks Later

After the Fall

6:47 AM

David sat on his bed, his sleeping son cradled in his arms. The room was small - carved out of stone, with two rotting cots and grimy tile covering the floor. There were no doors. Some people put up blankets or sheets over their doorway, but David didn’t really mind the lack of privacy. There was something comforting about hearing people run back and forth through the hallways all hours of the day and night. Currently, a teenage boy and girl were betting on who would get sent out next. It wasn’t a comforting thought. 

Jonah yawned against David’s chest, his tiny fists full of David’s shirt. 

“Hey, little guy.” David said gently. He patted the back of Jonah’s head. “Ready for another day?” 

_ The last day.  _

Jonah sat up, blinking sleep-heavy eyes. “Ma? Mama?” He chirped. David laughed. 

“Dada,” he corrected. 

David sat up on the cot and let Jonah play with his fingers and a spoon that David had finessed from the cafeteria. The bunker didn’t provide any sort of children’s toy or entertainment, so David took it upon himself to try and find little things here and there to keep Jonah happy. David had even started to sew him a stuffed animal using the cloth from his own rationed blanket. It was still half-finished, and thread was hard to come by in the bunker community, but David knew that he could swap some food rations for thread with a man on the fifth floor who had a dead wife that liked to sew. 

_ Not that it would matter in a few hours.  _

“David Luna.” A woman in uniform stood at the doorway of David’s room, holding a clipboard and not quite looking at him. 

“That’s me. What’s wrong, officer?” David’s tone feigned innocence, ignorance. Jonah gurgled happily, but there was nothing but silence between the two adults. 

The woman cleared her throat. “Your son and your ex-wife - Annabeth Luna? They’re being sent out.” 

It was fucking idiotic. Jonah was barely over a year and a half old. And they were going to dump him out into fallout to die. Annabeth may be able to handle herself, but with a child? There was no way. 

“Oh,” David managed. He’d already known. Usually, the news of who was about to be sent out made the rounds before the day came. 

He looked into Jonah’s big, brown eyes. The way he smiled, so full of that innocence David wished he had. 

“I’ll take him from here. We’ll give him to the mother and prepare them before they leave the bunker.” 

David felt like he was in a daze. Like he couldn’t think straight. He clutched Jonah to his chest, standing up and moving the few paces that it took to get to the doorway, until he and the woman were just inches apart. 

“Mama,” Jonah giggled. 

“No,” David said faintly. 

He handed the child that he had invested his whole life into for years over to a woman he had never met. 

“Assembly will be at eight.” The woman said shortly. 

Then, they were gone. 

 

-x-

 

It turned out that Max was an  _ excellent  _ gambler. 

In the shadows of an abandoned seventh floor storage room, teenagers from every floor of the bunker would come for the chance to win all sorts of things - extra rations, playing cards, battery packs, anything that was worth it. In the evenings, you would most likely find Max there, sweeping the floor with whatever he had just won. It didn’t matter what game it was - poker, blackjack, street craps, fucking  _ yahtzee _ \- if Max was there, the chances of anyone else winning were slim. He was known as the King 7. 

The seventh floor was completely abandoned otherwise. It was the last floor of the bunker, but shifts in the earth made it so that it was primarily just rubble, and no power from the generators made it. So, the staircase was sealed off with some caution tape. Of course, most curious teenagers disregarded it. Anyone who searched the floor wouldn’t be suspicious, because Max’s chosen closet was half-buried, and you had to know where to look if you wanted to find the entrance. It was the perfect spot to stay off the radar. 

When he wasn’t gambling, Max stayed in that storage closet anyway. He wasn’t on the roster, on the long list of minors in the bunker. He didn’t have to check in every time he saw an officer, and couldn’t be formally punished for any of the gambling he was doing, even if they did catch him. He was free to do as he pleased. But that meant that he had no meal ration card. He couldn’t take showers, or go to school, or assemblies. Even though Nikki and Neil brought down as much stuff as they could, gambling was all Max had. It was his means of survival, because if he was caught - well, he would certainly be sent out immediately. 

It was a sunday morning, which meant that assembly was at eight. Nikki, Neil, and Max were holed up in the storage closet, as per usual. Max sat on the table. Neil sat on an upside down container that doubled as a chair. Nikki laid in one of the storage shelves, thumbing through an old PEOPLE magazine from before the bomb. The three of them chatted about rumors and what life outside the bunker would be like and their insane families breezily, all regular topics on any given day. 

“I might go to the assembly today.” Nikki said. It was a passing comment - nonchalant at best, but both Max and Neil stopped talking to look at her. 

They  _ always  _ skipped assembly. It was long, boring, and in the past few months, it was just watching more and more people get separated from their families and sent out. They were hidden on the 7th floor, because no one dared to go down there except for the group of teens that answered to the king. But Nikki avoided their eyes, looking through her magazine, her bottom lip jutting out ever so slightly.  

“What? Why?” Neil asked. Nikki hesitated. 

“Annabeth is getting sent out,” she said, her tone careful. “And Jonah. I know we kind of stopped talking to them, but...she was kind of like a second mother to me. I just want to say goodbye, you know? I mean, guys, we’ve known them for years.” 

Neil looked shaken. “But what about Max? He can’t go to any of the other floors.” 

“It’s fine. It’s only an hour or so. I’ll stay down here.” Max tore his gaze away from Nikki and picked up the candle sitting in front of him. It was at the bottom of its wick, fading fast. “Fuck. Neil, pass me another candle.” 

“Which scent?” 

“Surprise me.” 

Neil handed Max a pine scented yankee candle. To save matches, it was lit with the dying embers of the last candle, strengthening the dim light in the closet. 

From some distant floor, they could hear one of the scheduled official alerts blare over the speakers, calling everyone to assembly. Nikki slid down from the shelf she was lying on and smiled at the boys, dropping her magazine. “I’ll be back soon. Hang tight, okay? Don’t die.” 

“Don’t die.” Max replied. Then, his voice softened. “Say bye to Annabeth for me and Neil.” 

“Alright, I will.” 

“You don’t have to speak for me, you know. I’m right here.” Neil cut in, irritated. Nikki laughed. Then she disappeared into the darkness outside of the room. 

The taped-off entrance to the staircase offered little in the way of light, and Nikki didn’t have any battery packs to charge a flashlight, so she felt her way through the darkness like someone who was blind. She was familiar with it by now, but Nikki just hated the dark. She despised it. 

It reminded her of the night she thought she was going to die. 

_ Nikki had never sprinted so fast in her life.  _

_ Her mouth was dry. She could taste the bile in her throat. With every step, her frame shattered against the pavement. With every step, she broke.  _

_ Her mind was blank.  _

_ It was too hard to stop. Too painful to slow down. All she could do was keep pushing, straining her muscles to the limit.  _

_ The sky was quickly darkening now, and it would be harder and harder to find Max, but Nikki delved into the woods without a second thought. The sirens, echoing out for miles, was all she needed.  _

_ “Max!” Nikki screamed as she ran, trying her best to retrace their steps in the dark, but her mind was still hazy from the aftereffects of the liquor. Her body seized and suddenly she was on her knees, vomiting so forcibly that she couldn’t do anything but gag until the entire contents of her stomach was on her tee-shirt and the ground in from of her. As soon as it was physically possible, she got up on her knees, wiped her mouth on her arm, and attempted to scream above the sirens. “MAX? MAX, WHERE ARE YOU?” She stumbled through the woods, her muscles on fire.  _

_ “...Max…” Nikki found the nearest tree and slumped against it. She felt light-headed, sick, and the constant blare of the siren wasn’t helping.  _

_ The darkness in the woods shifted.  _

_ “Nikki?” Max appeared a little ways away, slowing down cautiously before running toward her. “Nikki, you good?” He eyed her shirt, which was covered in watery vomit. “Oh-”  _

_“I’m alright.” Nikki interrupted, like it was more to convince herself than Max. “I’m alright, really. I just came back to get you - we need to get home? It’s a bombing alert, and I’m not sure--”_ _  
_ _“Nikki. I would have been fine. I’m not stupid, I was on my way back.” Max replied shortly. Then he glanced at Nikki, looking half-dead, and his expression softened as he held out an arm to stabilize her. “Thanks anyway, though. I appreciate it. Y’know, it’s been like 10 minutes and we’re probably going to both die, but hey. At least I’ll be in good company.”_

_ It was too dark to see anything, and even though they knew the woods like the back of their hands, it was still a struggle to sprint through it, intoxicated, screaming for help until they came to a busy clearing, littered with cars and people loading into a heavily armored entrance in the rock face that looked like it had been cleared of thick vegetation in a frenzy.  _

_ It would be a lie to say that either Nikki or Max believed in luck, but it was one of the luckiest breaks of their life.  _

Nikki made it to the staircase and began to sprint up it. She was always late, so no one was surprised that she was a couple of minutes late for the assembly. Assemblies took place in the cafeteria, which was cleared when meals weren’t happening and used as a space for various weekly activities. Once her number was recorded and she was checked into the assembly hall, she slipped into the crowd of people and tried to find her mother. 

Instead, she ran into David, who looked unrecognisable. His skin was pale and clammy, and his eyes were sunken back into his skull, too big, like he hadn’t slept in days. His skin was stretched across his limping frame, and his hair was dirty and matted. He was wearing a white shirt that was covered in stains, and looked like the living dead. 

He stared past Nikki like she didn’t exist. 

“...David?” Nikki touched his arm gently, which made David flinch backwards. His system seemed to kick into action, and life flickered back into his eyes. A nervous smile graced his lips. 

“Hiya, Nikki. I haven’t seen you around in a while. How are you? How’s Neil?” 

Nikki shook her head and gripped David’s wrist firmly. “David, are you okay? You look dead. Like, actually, I think you’re going to die.” 

David just laughed, but it didn’t sound quite right. Usually, he laughed like everything mattered - now, he laughed like nothing did. “I’m fine. Just a couple of rough sleeping nights. I’ll be back to normal in no time, don’t you worry a hot second about me!” 

“Okay…” Nikki said worriedly. She let go of David’s bony arm, but didn’t move otherwise, so that they were reduced to an awkward silence. 

Then, David started to cry. 

Nikki watched his tears well up in the corners of his sunken eyes, getting caught in his eyelashes before overflowing and running down his cheeks noiselessly. 

“Hey, David, it’ll be alright.” Nikki whispered, patting David’s back. The assembly started, and a man in uniform hopped up on the makeshift podium (which was really just a table) and started to bark, but it wasn’t anything worth listening to - just the general murmur of reports and conditions. It was only when he started listing off people’s names from a clipboard that everyone began to tune in. They would start out by saying that the people named had to stay back from assembly, like they were just there for an activity or meeting, but everyone knew that they wouldn’t see anyone called again. Nikki glanced at David - he started ahead, empty-eyed, not even bothering to wipe the tears from his chin. 

When Annabeth and Jonah’s names were called, Nikki searched David for a reaction, but he seemed frozen. So Nikki carefully slipped her hand into David’s and held it. Just to keep him anchored. As a support. 

When assembly was dismissed, the called were rounded up into the center of the cafeteria as most of the others shuffled out. Nikki could see Annabeth looking longingly in David’s direction, Jonah tight against her chest, even though David seemed to be out of it and unable to understand the situation. David turned to go out, but Nikki held him in place firmly. She tried to keep her tone light and nonthreatening. “Come on, let’s go talk to Anna. Or Jonah, we can just talk to Jonah if you want. But let’s just say hello, okay?” 

David didn’t reply. Nikki kept holding his hand and walked him over to the called, grimacing solemnly at Annabeth. 

“You’ve always been like a second mother to me,” she said. “Stay safe.” 

“Oh, I love you so much.” Annabeth hugged Nikki with the arm that wasn’t holding Jonah and gave her a quick kiss on the forehead. “Stay safe.” 

Then the attention was shifted to David, who seemed to have come out of shock enough to look concerned. 

“Davey,” Annabeth murmured. David looked up at her. “I’m going to leave.” 

“I should come with you.” He said.  
Annabeth shook her head. “No, you shouldn’t. You’re sick, David. You need to stay here and get better.” David laughed his empty laugh again, and Anna frowned at him. 

“Anna. I’m not going to  _ get _ any better. You know this. I should go with you?” 

Annabeth looked at Nikki. 

“What about all of these other children? What about Nikki? What about Max? Be her father figure. There are so many kids here that are getting their parents sent out. I just want you to help them. I need you to stay. It’ll make you better, Davey.” 

David hesitated. Annabeth patted him awkwardly on the shoulder. 

“You can promise me that you’ll be alright?” He muttered. 

“Yes, David. I’ll be fine.” 

Annabeth pressed her head to David’s, and the two shared an embrace for the moment before letting go. Then, David took Nikki’s hand again. He didn’t look quite as dead as before, but still ragged. Like the personified version of an open wound. 

Nikki walked David back to his room, where he went to lie down on his cot and promptly went to sleep. Then, she took off and practically flew down the 13 flights of stairs it took to get to the seventh floor. By the time she ducked under the tape, her breathing was loud and heavy - she’d gotten out of shape being in the bunker, where even though there were long hallways, there wasn’t much room to actually exercise. 

Max was instructing Neil on how to better cheat while playing blackjack when Nikki burst into the room. 

“How was it?” Neil looked up from his hand and dropped it onto the table. 

“Sad. David’s losing it.” Nikki replied, pulling a stool (which was really just an upside-down wastebasket) up to the table and slumping against it. She picked up her magazine again, but she just looked tired. 

Max snorted. “David’s always losing it, Nikki. I’m pretty sure his life is just one long story of him losing it.” He began to collect the cards again where Neil dropped them, putting them into one neat little stack. 

“Nah, he’s bad this time. He doesn’t look like David, y’know? I think he might have cancer or something. Something he can’t get treatment for down here in the bunker. You haven’t seen him in months, Max, but I think something’s definitely wrong.”  
There was a silence as Max thought. 

“Good for him, then. He gets the sweet embrace of death faster than all of us stuck in this damn bunker until someone willingly comes back and tells us we’re safe to go out.” 

“Max…” 

“Leave it, Nikki.” 

Nikki left it. 

“Hey, Max, I’ll bet you a game of blackjack for that moleskine notebook.” Neil said, breaking the cold pause. 

“Neil, I would raw your fucking pussy with my blackjack skills. You’re absolutely, undeniably terrible. Take the goddamn notebook, I’ve got nothing to do with it anyway.” 

“Shit.” Neil laughed, but took the notebook and set it next to him on the container he was sitting on. 

The three friends enjoyed the dark and the quiet of the safe haven they had created. Of their own little world. 

Then, it was shattered. 

Three things happened: 

First, Nerris burst into the storage closet and started yelling hysterically at Max, with a distraught Dolf right behind her. “EVERYONE SHUT UP! Everyone just shut up-”

Second, she knocked the candle off of the table, which cracked against the ground and plunged all of them into complete darkness. 

Third, she shoved Max towards the cot in the room, everyone confused and swearing and not shutting up in the slightest. 

“Max, Max, get under the bed. Like, now.” Nerris turned on a flashlight and sat down on the table, picking up a mass of cards and dealing out to Nikki and Neil. Dolph stood by, sweating profusely. Max didn’t move. 

“H-here, uh - come play a game with me,” Nerris’ hands were shaking, but Neil caught on and motioned to Max, who finally understood. 

They could hear the loud, commanding steps of an adult coming down the stairs. The regulars knew well enough how to go up and down without making a sound, but these were the heavy boots of officers examining the seventh floor. 

“What are we playing?” Nikki asked quietly, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the unnaturally bright flashlight. But it was better than being caught with a lit candle, which implied they had both candles and matches or lighters among them - all of which were strictly forbidden. 

“Uh - bullshit?” Nerris whispered. She wasn’t a gambler, and the only card games she knew were childish and not worth playing. But they all played anyway as the steps travelled around the floor. Nerris dealt them all an equal amount of cards, checking back to make sure Max was invisible under the bed. 

No one would be able to see anything more than a shadow. Perfect. 

The footsteps grew closer, along with voices. The entrance to the closet was half-caved in, but with flashlights, it was easy to find. 

“What’s going on here?” 

When Nikki looked up from her cards, she was staring straight into the blinding beam of a flashlight.

“Er- just cards,” Nerris had grown out of her lisp ages ago, but when she was really nervous, she found herself sinking back into it. She glanced at Nikki, who was looking at the two severe officers standing at the entrance and obviously trying hard to keep her face calm and relaxed. 

“You do know that this floor is not only condemned, but also forbidden, right? What if the whole thing had collapsed on top of you? Jesus, kids can be so stupid.” One of the officers said, and Nikki nodded. 

“Sorry, sir, we just wanted to get away from all of the people on the other floors. We won’t do it again.” She said, picking up the cards. “Come on, guys, let’s get out of here.” 

The flashlight swept the room, once, and then twice. 

Everyone held their breath. 

“Okay, I guess we can let you off this time. But we won’t find you down here again.” 

It wasn’t a question, and it was all Nikki could do to nod confidently. “Yessir.” 

While the teenagers packed up, one of the officers inspected the room loosely, pausing when he looked in a certain box. “Are these candles yours?” he looked at the floor by the table and found the mess from the candle that had been shoved off. “What were you lighting these with? This is against the rules.” 

Nikki said, “Well-” but was immediately cut off by Neil, who shook his head. 

“We didn’t light them. They were there when we arrived.” 

“But the wax is still hot.” 

Neil looked helplessly at the group of teenagers, out of ideas. 

Nikki bit her lip. 

“It’s mine. I got a lighter, but it was my mom’s old one before she had to leave the bunker. She was like all of our mothers, always making sure we weren’t getting into trouble. We all gathered here to talk about her life and stuff. Because I’ll probably never see her again.” She said emotionally, casting her gaze to the officer’s feet. “I lit the candle in rememberance, it’s a family tradition. I’m sorry. You can send me out, I’ll-” - for dramatic effect, she gave a little sob here - “-I’ll be fine. I just miss her so much.” 

There was a long silence as this sunk in. Dolf put a hand on Nikki’s shoulder. “We all do.” 

The officer standing in front of them shook his head. “You shouldn’t do dangerous things like that. But maybe we can still let you off. We came down here because someone gave us a tip telling us that some dark-haired kid was running a gambling ring down here, but it must have just been a rumor. Come on, now, let’s get upstairs. Also, give me all of your numbers. I’m giving you all strikes on your ID cards.” 

The officer at the door was still looking coldly at them, clearly still suspicious. As the teens headed out of the room and gave the other officer their numbers, he walked over to the table and grabbed the flashlight that Nerris had brought down, sweeping the room another time. His gaze rested on the cot in the corner. 

“What’s that?” 

“A bed.” Nikki said quickly, but she was too fast, too high-pitched. The officer took one look at her trembling lip and went to go inspect it further. 

“Strange to have a bed in a storage closet.” 

He pointed the flashlight under the cot and got on one knee. 

Max looked fucking  _ mutinous _ . Like he wanted to kill something. 

“Who’s this? Another friend of yours?”   
Nikki opened her mouth to speak, but from behind her, Nerris grabbed her wrist and squeezed it harshly to get her to keep it shut. 

“No sir. I’ve never seen him before in my life.” 

“I can speak for myself. You’re all dickholes.” Max interjected. He slid out from under the cot and started to get up, but the officer grabbed his arm so that he wouldn’t go anywhere. 

Both officers were looking at Nikki. “Your story better be good.” 

Max looked even more pissed that they weren’t acknowledging him. 

“Hey! Don’t look at them, look at me. Eyes over here, thanks. Look - I’ve never seen them down here before this morning. Why would I want to be around those fucking losers? I’ve been living down here, but I didn’t ask for my closet to become a weepy crybaby card party.” 

Nikki almost laughed. Sometimes she and Neil doubted whether Max actually cared, when he got especially harsh or controlling - but it was times like these, where he took the huge blows for all of them, that they remembered the softer parts of his heart. 

“Are you sure? How are you getting food and water?” 

Max pulled up his dirty tee-shirt with his free hand, revealing just how skinny he was. You could practically see every one of his ribs, and his muscles were well-defined, but not because he was muscular and in shape - because he had lost so much body fat that there was practically none left. He looked even worse than David. “Think I eat often?” 

“Yet you’ve still been eating for the past half year, or else you’d be dead. That means you’ve been leeching off our supplies.” The officer holding him said sharply. “You’re going to be sent out. Hopefully, you’re telling the truth and none of these other kids have nothing to do with any of this.” 

“Yeah, okay.” Max said sarcastically. The officer put him in handcuffs, and Max exchanged a softer kind of eye contact with every one of the friends he had in front of him before he pushed past them and into the dark hallway, followed by the officer. 

The other man looked at the remaining kids. 

“Okay, well, let’s get back upstairs. Everyone back to their rooms. I know it’s Sunday, but you should all go back to your floors.” 

Nikki didn’t go back to her room on the sixth floor. She bolted as soon as they reached the stairwell, sprinting up the steps and barrelling down the fourth floor hallway, panting heavily by the time she reached David’s room. 

David was still sleeping hard on his bed, and while Nikki hated to wake him from the first sleep he’d probably gotten in days, some things were more important. She shouted and shook him back and forth, nails digging into his upper arms. “David! David, wake up! Hey! David, I need you to wake up…” 

Hesitantly, he stirred and blinked sleep-heavy eyes at her. 

“Nikki - what are you doing? What’s wrong?” He mumbled, using her as a support to sit up. 

“David! You need to get up - Max is being sent out! He’s gonna die, and I just, I need to ask a favor of you.” Nikki was still practically shouting, but she sounded as if she’d calmed down a little bit.

“Why, of course - anything!” David said. He was still waking up, rubbing his eyes, but when he met Nikki’s gaze, she was dead serious. 

“You know how you can choose to go out if you want? But no one does it, because it’s like volunteering for the hunger games?” 

“Yeah.” 

“And you know how you best childhood friend and even platonic wife that you had a child with got sent out and asked you to basically support us and be a father to all us kids?” 

“Yes, I do.” 

“Well David - I know this is asking a lot, but, well-” 

“What?” 

“I need you to go out with Max.” 


	3. Drown//

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two updates, two days apart? Yes. because I love writing Daniel, even though I suck at it. His story and design were the very first for this AU, back in December. (God it feels like so much longer!) Anyway, this chapter is actually kind of Danvid-y? Because I wrote the majority of this last night and today, and y'know, valentine's day! Gotta get a little bit of romance in there. But in Daniel's own screwed up way? Idk y'all, but read it and tell me what you think of...everything! and stuff,,,

Daniel had been bathing in bleach. 

Some people -  _ normal  _ people - told Daniel that he was perfect, with his flawless skin and white teeth and his pretty, seductive words. 

The  _ normal _ people, though, couldn’t even begin to grasp the inside of Daniel’s mind. The hellhole that wasted beneath a immaculate exterior. His brain was a rotting, deformed corpse. He saw the visions of people who weren’t there. Ghosts that burned his arms and gouged his eyes. He peeled the skin from his face and tore the teeth from his mouth. He didn’t feel anything but anguish. Nothing could build him up and break him down the way that pain did. 

And oh,  _ god _ did it feel good to rip himself apart at the seams. 

No one at the hospital seemed to care about his habits. Daniel would just snag the bleach from the closet or a janitor’s cart and add it to his prepared bath. There were many benefits to adding bleach to his bath - it burned his eyes and nose, foamed and bubbled around his chest, and the smell usually made him sick afterward, leaving him to vomit on the floor and get rid of all that nasty food he’d been forced to ingest, three times a day. Some said that he was strange, or possessed - but they simply didn’t understand that the world was not “normal” to Daniel. He was nature’s perfect villain. He didn’t feel. He didn’t have cause, or reason. He just wanted to see human beings suffer for their imperfections. 

He did have a weakness, though - but no one knew. He barely recognised it himself. 

So, when the bomb sirens went off, Daniel had been bathing in bleach. 

He didn’t panic. He simply got out, wrapped a towel around his waist, and met his caretaker just outside the bathroom. 

“Where are we going?” He asked, but his caretaker was clearly having a panic attack and incoherent. 

“I - ah, I - I don’t know?”

Daniel sighed. It was so like humans to falter, to fear for their own lives when it was all so meaningless. “I am going to the basement,” he said. 

“Hey, wait, you can’t go anywhere outside your room without explicit permission from the head psychiatrist, and I have to unlock the door with my ID-” 

Daniel whipped around and shoved his caretaker’s head against the wall, holding it there firmly. The caretaker whimpered in pain. 

“I am going to the basement,” he repeated slowly, as if he was talking to a stupid animal. “You will not and cannot stop me.” 

With one last glare, Daniel released his caretaker’s head, took the ID from the lanyard around his neck, and walked out of the hospital room for the first time in months. Daniel walked down the stairs, following other employees and the few who were lucky enough to have convinced someone to unlock their room doors. 

But they wouldn’t be able to get everyone out. How strange, how bitter, this future mass grave was. Walls of concrete and stone. Like a jail that humans paid to stay in. 

Daniel made it to the basement, where various employees and patients were whimpering and crying and panicking. He scanned the crowd until he found Jen.

“Hello, Jen.” Daniel said, sounding bored. 

“Hey, Dan.” Jen replied, equally bored. 

They stood in silence, but it was never cold. They were just connected. Like matching halves. 

“We should leave this place,” Daniel said finally. 

“That’d be nice.” Jen said, not looking up from her fingernails. “Now?” 

“Yes.” 

With the bomb sirens going off, and everyone panicking and running through the halls, Daniel and Jen walked out. 

“You should put on something other than a towel,” Jen told him as they took a leisurely stroll through the parking lot. 

“I should,” Daniel agreed. “It’s not in good taste, no matter how much I detest this human body. Oh - I should get a suit. They’ve left me in that wasteland too long - my mind’s gone to rot. Jen, you should put on something other than scrubs. Let me get my knife and we can take a car out of here.” 

“Fine,” Jen said. 

They went around the hospital building to an electrical box. It swung open on rusty hinges, and Daniel took from it a jagged knife. He tested the weight in his hand, tossing it back and forth harmlessly a couple of times. Then, something darker came over him and he stabbed at the delicate wiring inside the box, one, two, three times, until all of the lights in the hospital building towering above them began to flicker out. 

They stole a car and drove 90 on the abandoned streets. Because who cared if they died? It was all so meaningless anyway. 

 

6 Months Later

After the Fall

2 PM 

Daniel couldn’t shake off the sinking feeling that sat in the pit of his stomach. 

He tried to forget about his nagging anxieties that were so rare, but he just couldn’t help it - it seemed that when he was ever so rarely nervous, it spread to every nook in his body and made him shake and suffer. It was manageable, though. He was used to suffering. It was a familiar feeling. 

Daniel changed into a new uniform. It was midday, but he changed whenever he felt even slightly unclean. It helped him focus. When his earring snagged in the fabric, his brow furrowed further - it frustrated him slightly that nothing seemed to be going his way. When he got frustrated, he got dangerous - and, well, it was a bad day to be dangerous. He was giving an orientation to all new campers that had arrived in the last couple of days, and Jen told him that he wasn’t allowed to kill any of them this time, which would take a fair amount of patience. 

Switching out for a new pair of blue latex gloves, Daniel stepped out of his platform tent and walked along the side of the mess hall tent until he got to the general courtyard area, where various campers loitered around. 

Daniel laughed a short, sardonic laugh. A couple of nearby children heard it and looked at him strangely. He took a deep breath and addressed one of them, a brown-haired boy with blue eyes. 

“What’s your name, boy?” He said in the friendliest tone he could manage. 

“Salem,” the boy replied, looking not at all happy to be talking to anyone. But still, he kept on a polite face. “I’m new. What’s yours?” 

“I’m Father Darek, but most just call me Father.” 

“You don’t sound like someone’s dad.” 

“We don’t tolerate ignorance here,” Daniel said coldly. “We teach respect. If you can’t seem to get that through your thick skull, you’ll be taken care of.” 

Daniel didn’t feel remorse for running out of patience after thirty seconds, but he only got more irritated - this time at himself for snapping so quickly, ruining any element of dark, tainted surprise. Daniel’s eyes scanned the lot for Jen, who he found rushing to the entrance - most likely to deal with some new campers. He followed her. 

“Johanna,” he called out to her. “What’s wrong?” 

Johanna, where are you going?” 

Jen turned around to face him. “There you are, Darek. We need to get to the entrance to greet our new campers, you know how it goes.” She held two clipboards in her hands, and hold one out to Daniel. “Here, take this. Look like you’re being useful, won’t you?” 

“Sure.” Daniel took the clipboard from her and scanned it. Some meaningless form and nonrelevant information scrawled over the pages. He followed Jen outside the barriers of tents and into the greeting tent, sinking back into the shadows of a corner to observe the few ragged children that came to the tent. The camp pastor, a young man named Jason, presented each child with a form, urging them kindly to fill out as much as they could and then print their name at the bottom. You would never guess that they were also signing away any chance of escape of human rights with that cheap pen in between their chubby fingers. 

Jen seemed to be handling things, smiling at the children, even if they looked half-dead - which was an achievement for someone who immediately treated people based on appearances -  and greeting them warmly, like a kind mother would. 

That was when Daniel saw a face he recognised. A little shit of a kid, all grown up. Of course he would be here, now - well, Daniel would take care of him within a week, and the problem would disappear. Jen noticed the kid too, and subtly turned her back and walked away to avoid recognition.

Daniel slipped outside the flaps of the tent and kept his cool. Lately, it had been harder and harder to keep himself under control, but a little breather wou-

“Daniel?” 

Daniel froze. That voice. He urged himself to look down, to not acknowledge it. He hated this, he hated being human. The silly little temptations that got in his way. 

“Danny, is that - you?” 

But god, he couldn’t resist it. 

He’d never met such a pure soul on this earth. A human he didn’t hate. One he didn’t want to kill. 

Daniel looked up, straight into the eyes of someone he hadn’t seen in years.  _ David _ . Standing just 20 feet away, looking war-torn. 

It had been so long. Too long, since he’d seen this kind of purity anywhere on the earth. 

But that summer so long ago, even after he saw the dark mess inside of David, Daniel still couldn’t seem kill him, even though it would have been just  _ so easy  _ \- any given morning, David slept with his head against Daniel’s chest, his freckled neck so exposed, and all Daniel had to do was slit it and he would be free of that hellish camp-

But he couldn’t do it. He didn’t like excessive gore, anyway, and thinking about David’s neck split wide open, drowned on his own blood; well, it made him more possessive than bloodthirsty. He’d comforted himself with the fact that by the end of the summer, David would be dead in the ground, by Daniel’s own knife. But days and weeks still passed, and he just - wasn’t. 

The summer ended, Daniel left, and David was very much alive. 

It  _ nagged  _ at Daniel like an obsession. Ate at his insides like a parasite. He wanted to kill David so badly. Shoot him, stab him, poison him, until those pretty eyes of his were glazed over and lifeless. He wanted David’s blood to run down his skin. 

“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Daniel said, trying his best to keep his voice even and cold. 

He hated himself. This was never a problem, as long as David wasn’t on his mind. Daniel didn’t care about  _ anyone _ . He would slit Jen’s throat in a heartbeat. He would shoot himself in an instant. But David - well, that was a different story. He needed to plan. To give him the perfectly orchestrated death. 

“Danny, what are you saying?”

Daniel felt a hand on his shoulder and nearly jumped (God, it really was one of those days wasn’t it? He was capable of being nervous), before realizing quickly that it was just Jen. 

“Pardon me, I don’t think my brother made this clear enough - you’re mistaken. This is Darek.  _ Father _ Darek. I’m Johanna. We’re German immigrants, here running this camp, and I assure you that we never go anywhere without each other and I’ve never seen you before in my life.” Jen’s German accent was flawless, and her gaze cold and deadly. David shrunk back. “Now, sir, I’m afraid that this camp is for children only, so I’m going to have to ask you to leave. 

David’s gaze fell on Daniel helplessly, and Daniel looked away. 

“...okay...I’m sorry, but I could have sworn I’d met you two…” David’s voice trembled, and he shook his head. 

Daniel looked up, a forced grin stretching too widely across his face as David took a few hesitant steps backward, then left. 

“You’re a cunt, you know what?” Jen said blandly, her accent evaporating into thin air. 

“Whatever do you mean?” 

“I mean, you’re a cunt. You’re going off the other end, Darek. I always knew you weren’t quite right in the head, but now you can’t even keep your cool. I’m...disappointed.” 

“Sure, Johanna. Whatever you say.”

“I do hope you’ve also lost your repulsion for blood? There’s a few kids here...I may need you to, an...take care of…” 

“Of course.” 

Jen took a peek back into the tent, and then stepped inside. Daniel followed. “I’m going to round up all of the children for orientation,” she said. “Jason, close the tent and help me get everyone in the mess hall. Darek - you’re speaking to them this time. Get ready.” 

Daniel nodded silently and slipped through a gap in the tents to get back to his own unnoticed before he had to speak. Stepping into the platform tent, he opened his dresser and pulled out a mirror. 

He hated mirrors, and seeing himself. But they were necessary. Attractive people were more trustworthy in the eyes of undeveloped minds. He fixed his hair with his free hand, pale blue eyes staring cold back at him in the mirror. 

He smiled at himself, then stuck a gloved finger in his mouth and felt along the top. The teeth there were starting to build up over the past few months - he would have to start pulling them out again before they started to push his teeth up and into the gums. It was almost a relief - he needed the pain to clear his mind. It’d been too long since he’d reminded himself that this wasn’t his truest, final form. Just a pit stop on his way to becoming a god. 

This was good. Thinking of his mission took those human distractions off of his mind. 

Except, David reminded him of those forbidden worldly pleasures. Anything that he might enjoy, something that might keep him from wanting to ascend when the time came. Brightly colored flowers and running in the rain and pushing his hands through David’s wet hair. Warm mornings tucked in between white sheets and hot black coffee and gently kissing the freckles on the back of David’s neck to wake him. The ticks on his ankles and the scrapes on his knees and the leeches in lake lilac. 

All such fleeting feelings.

And it was just so  _ easy _ . 

But becoming a god wasn’t about being easy. It was about destroying yourself and the world around you. It was about being a menace. It was about rejecting hubris, and wandering aimlessly without purpose. Because any purpose other than ascendance was sinful. Daniel had been put through countless tests, and each one he overcame. 

David was the same. Just another lingering test. 

Daniel took the mirror and smashed it on the ground. 

He was going to crush each and every one of these children under his boots. 

 

Daniel was a brilliant speaker. Even when what he was saying was completely insane and unreasonable, people listened. That was part of what was so dangerous about him - he could talk a perfectly happy person into killing themselves, a sheep off of a cliff, the day into night. Everyone but Jen ate right out of his hands. 

A few children would be no problem. 

He climbed a couple of steps up to the platform in the mess hall tent that functioned as a stage - Jason was standing there currently, telling jokes that no one was laughing at. Daniel gave him a dark look and Jason immediately scampered off the stage.

In the crowd, he saw the face of that dark-haired kid. The one that reminded him of David and the forest and Camp Campbell. But Daniel was made of steel, and he spoke unwaveringly in that perfect German accent. 

“My name is Father Darek.” He said. His voice was calm and quiet. “You may have thought this was a safe haven.” 

He paused. 

“I’m here to tell you that you that it’s not. This place is a prison. I am going to beat you until you break. And none of your are going to complain - because only the strongest will survive in a world as torn as ours. If you don’t like it...well, there’s only one way to leave. You either survive the camp, or you die. Got it?” 

The children stared at him blankly. 

“Do we get food?” One of them asked, which further irritated Daniel. The frown dropped from his face and he started to smile, trying his best not to just snap and hang every single one of them up on crosses. 

“No, you get to rot,” he replied sarcastically. “Yes, we have food, because if we didn’t have food we’d all be dead already, hn?”

It was true that even the shitty treatment of the camp would be better than certain death alone in fallout. Even if the camp was run by a couple of near-psychopaths missing a couple of screws. 

Most of them just seemed tired. Over the last few months, the more children that came in the camp, the more hardened they were, and the less they cared about the abuse. Like life was about going through the motions. 

“I am the camp confessional,” Daniel tore his gaze from the kids and to his own gloved hands. “I enforce peninence on all campers and counselors, but usually not until they’re more, ah...devoted to our religion. Until then, all you have to do is chapel on Sundays.”

“Days start at five am. There are scheduled activities every single day, and each of you will get a tent assignment and a schedule. If you have a problem with either of those, don’t bother an adult with it - we don’t care.” he said, his smile lessening as his annoyance faded. Though they were apathetic, it would just make them easier to control. Perhaps he would be able to work with this group yet. 

Except for that one kid, who was slouching in the corner, not listening in the slightest. No, Daniel had a very special plan for him. However, it wasn’t the time for that - Daniel turned back to the children who showed at least  _ some _ interest, and started to talk again. “Occasionally, on days when we don’t have activities, we will take groups out of the camp to...raid...nearby houses and towns so that we can stay self-sufficient, as the position of this particular camp is dubious in the government’s eyes after a camper escaped last time and spread rumors around. Not that the government still exists, anyway...Anyhow, these raids are very dangerous, but if you refuse to participate in activities, you’ll find yourself going on these in your free time. You’ve been warned. 

“Additionally, in your free time you are allowed to leave the camp and explore, as long as you check out beforehand. You will each get a different number. Remember and memorize it, as you won’t be allowed to eat our food, have access to water, et cetera, without it. You can check out with this number, too. But only for the day. If we find you’ve tried to escape, I will  _ personally  _ hunt you down, and that will be irritating for me, and when I’m irritated, I like to take my feelings out on children who don’t know their place.”  

“Are you a pedophile? Cos, that’s kinda weird.” 

Daniel made a mental note to get rid of the girl who had said that as soon as possible. “I certainly am not. Please don’t take your insecurities out on me - I know you’re desperate for someone to touch you, but nothing turns me on less than a child that can’t shut their mouth. However, I’d be happy to stab you and put you out of your misery and dump your corpse out in the wasteland instead.” He pulled out his long, jagged knife and held it up so that everyone could see it. Daniel caught the eye of the child in the back of the room. It was an unspoken threat. “Does anyone else have anything they’d like to say to me?” 

The girl shut her mouth. No one spoke. Daniel put the knife away. 

“Good.” He said quietly. “Now, Mother Johanna is going to come and give you your numbers, tent assignments, schedules, and everything that matters. Hopefully, you won’t give her a hard time. If you do, you’ll find yourself up and buried six feet underground in your sleep.” 

With that, he walked off the stage. Jen smiled at him, but it was empty. Both of their smiles always were. “I can’t believe you’re having such a hard time with these children.” Her tone sounded almost mocking, but from her, it didn’t irritate Daniel - they were both on the same mission. Even if they disliked each other. 

“At least 3 of them are dead men walking.” Daniel hissed, stalking off toward his tent. Jen watched him go with that empty smile, dropped it, and then went up to the stage herself. 

Back in his tent, Daniel changed his gloves again before opening a large tool chest, pulling out a silver version of what were basically medical-grade pliers - extraction forceps. He took one shard of mirror from the ground and leaned against his dresser, feeling around the top of his mouth until he found a tooth that called to him. 

He picked up the pliers, and without any sort of painkiller or warning at all, he cracked the tooth backward and twisted it until it separated from the roof of his mouth. He smiled slightly in satisfaction. 

Daniel spit it out on the top of the dresser, his mouth filling with the hot taste of blood. Without anything to stem the flow, blood and saliva ran through his teeth and down his chin.

“What the actual  _ fuck _ are you doing?” 

In a split second Daniel dropped everything else in his hands and had his knife out, poised to strike. Turning to face the entrance of the tent, he came face to face with the dark-haired kid from earlier, who wore a repulsed pout. 

“Get. Out.” Daniel growled, but the kid apparently didn’t feel particularly threatened. 

“Look, I  _ know _ you know me. I know who you are. What you told David and the other kids is a load of bullshit, you know?” The kid said, and Daniel had half a mind to stab him right there, and pitch his corpse into the bonfire. But he was frozen in anxiety and rage. The two worst emotions, happiness aside. 

“I think you’re mistaken, little boy. Are you lost? Maybe I can help you back to your tent.” Daniel hissed through bloody, gritted teeth. 

“Yeah, look, I know you’re that Daniel that tried to murder my whole camp a few years ago, okay? I couldn’t give less of a shit about that.” The kid said, unmoving. “I just followed you back to your tent because I wanted to make sure. I don’t know why. Probably because you’re gonna try to kill us all in a mass human sacrifice for whatever shit religion you practice.” 

Daniel composed himself. He wiped his mouth, stood up straight, and tucked his knife away. He couldn’t just kill the kid now. Not like this. “Leave.” 

The kid flipped him off, shrugged, and left.

“ _ You’ll be first, _ ” he whispered. 

 


	4. Struggle// part i

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This story is going to be longer than originally planned. I wanted it to be 10 chapters, and I had it all planned out, but some of these are just way too long and complex to be one chapter? So I'm gonna have to split this one into two different parts. This is part one. It's not very interesting, but part two will spice it up? Maybe not. I'll try, though. 
> 
> This is unedited like allllll my chapters because I'm lazy and none of my friends care about my weird camp camp fanfiction enough to beta it lmao

 

_4 Years Before_

_Late June_

“You really scared the kids last night with that story, huh? Even I had some trouble sleeping, it got into my head.” David sat on the floor, making small talk while dabbing Daniel’s bloody knee with antiseptic and cotton balls. Daniel smiled and glanced out the window at the children playing outside. Evening light filtered into the counselor’s cabin, casting warm orange shadows.

“Well, it’s what I’m good at, words. A little scare never hurt anyone, hopefully? Nonetheless, I’ll tone it down next time.” He said gently, brushing his hair out of his eyes. It had been months since his last haircut, and Daniel couldn’t seem to stop it from falling over his face no matter how many times he blow-dried it back.

David laughed, dropping the soiled cotton balls into the trash and getting out some bandages. “No, no! It was very good. You’re very creative with it, no doubt. Not too graphic, but sinister. Good campfire stories.”

“I try.” Daniel replied, his tone soft and humble. He watched David finish on his gash-covered knee, wrapping it up.

Daniel looked like just a shy young man with a pretty face and a big heart. Just looking at him, you wouldn’t know that he was a wanted criminal that’d murdered more people than you could count on both hands. But David didn’t know that - as far as he knew, this was a man that had clearly been framed for attempted murder. Who wouldn’t believe him? Daniel could tell you exactly how he’d been framed, down the the smallest fact. It was an airtight argument, yet he still had to spend the summer taking care of kids at Camp Campbell to clear out his community service hours. And still, he would be branded a murderer for the rest of his life. David didn’t think it was fair, for someone that cute.

He didn’t know how they really started dating. David just wanted something to make him feel good, and, well - Daniel was just _there_. He was smart and kind and charismatic. They just kind of fell together, in secret. And there would be those lovely moments where they could tumble around in fields and kiss against trees and be happy boyfriends in the most secret place in the world.

Daniel thought that David acted like a child. But he was knowledgeable and endearing, and he had a smile that could light up a pitch black room. His innocence alone was what fascinated Daniel most; he pondered it like a fixation. He knew it was dangerously close to distracting him from his bigger purposes, but...there were worse things than sharing a bed with someone that smelled like fresh air and pine sap for a summer. Almost _caring_ about him for brief moments here and there.

After all, it was just one summer. He would perform a penitence ritual afterward. And no one else would have to know.

There were some things about David that should have irritated Daniel. Like the time David convinced Daniel to go swimming in his boxers because he didn’t have a swimsuit. Daniel ended up with a leech that had attached itself to...an _uncomfortable_ place, but he couldn’t find it in himself to be mad. Or, how David always insisted he ate three times a day. It ruined Daniel’s usual purification diet, and the food was exceedingly shitty, but David was so enthusiastic about it - so Daniel shoved it in, three times a day, and he couldn’t even throw it up afterward because David was always watching him.

Daniel was sort of physically weak and not at all suited to helping with a camp. Years of starving himself and general malnourishment had taken a harsh toll on his body, but David made him eat, and he’d found himself putting on more healthy weight since the beginning of the summer. In his more sinful moments, Daniel would admit his jealousy - David had a _gorgeous_ human body. He had clearly sculpted and defined muscles from physical activity, his teeth were naturally straight and white, and his whole body was covered in those beautiful lightly colored freckles.

Daniel stood up, testing his knee. “You did a good job,” he said, sounding mildly impressed. “Thank you.”

“You’re very welcome.” David replied kindly, packing up his first aid kit and standing up himself. “We can’t have any injured counselors around here!”

Daniel smiled, taking a step toward David, wrapping a hand around his waist. “I’m not sure anyone would care if I went and disappeared, except you.” He murmured in a low tone, his lips against David’s ear.

“D...eh, don’t be silly!” David laughed nervously, flushed. He was always shaken by Daniel’s attention, and how such an attractive man could, well - fawn over him. Daniel had these washed out blue eyes and white blonde hair (David had a _type,_ okay?), and was someone you could never quite read, but was always kind. He felt lucky. “You’re such an addition to our community. You’re so good with kids, they listen to everything you say. What would we do without you?”

David wrapped his arms around Daniel tightly and hugged him like he was holding onto his will to keep living life.

Of the two, David was much stronger, and Daniel made a small choking sound before David quickly released him.

“Oh gosh, I’m so sorry!” He cried, patting Daniel’s back lightly. Daniel coughed a few times before smiling again, even laughing.

“It’s fine, David, your enthusiasm makes me happy.” Daniel straightened up and fixed the sleeves of his counselor tee-shirt. “We better get out there and get a fire started for the children. Sun is setting.”

“Sure thing, Danny!” David exclaimed happily, tossing the closed first aid kit onto his bed and following Daniel outside.

They got a fire started (David, mostly) and Gwen wrangled the campers as Jen got together ingredients for their campfire s’mores. The sky darkened further. They sat around the fire with the campers, roasting s’mores, and just enjoying each other’s presence. Mosquitoes attacked them relentlessly. Daniel was particularly frustrated by that, to which one of the wiser campers asked him if he had “a satanic ritual that would kill all of the mosquitoes on the whole earth”. Daniel replied with “you’ll be the sacrifice” and the two bickered lightly until David stepped in and picked the little girl up, scolding both of them.

And looking at the stars in the sky, with a kid in his arms and Daniel next to him, David almost felt the true, genuine joy he was always searching for.

He almost felt alright.

 

_4 Years Later_

_After the Fall_

_3PM_

 

David was not alright.

His only security was looking into Max’s green eyes and hoping, that somewhere, this was helping. But Max’s dark glare kept to the ground, barely breaking when David approached him for the first time in months. They were stuck in the empty cafeteria (on Sundays there were no activities except for Assembly, so no one really bothered to leave their rooms), Max smelling and looking like a mess, and honestly, David the same. They both looked like they were already on the verge of death, like the ground was about to open up graves underneath them.

Nikki and Neil watched from the entrance of the cafeteria. They’d already said goodbye to Max, but they couldn’t help but watch.

“Hey, Max.”

Max grunted in reply, shaking his head. He didn’t want to talk.

“Okay, I see. Just, uh...take your time, then.” David muttered it. He wasn’t in the mood to talk either, but he just wanted to feel okay. To get validation. Unfortunately, Max was quite possibly the worst source he had to rely on. So, David sat down at a table a good ten feet away from Max, giving him the space he needed. Because children come first.

After a long pause, Max looked up. David could feel eyes burning into his shoulder, but kept staring at his dirty, scarred knees anyway.

“Thanks, I guess.” Max said quietly. It was nearly too low for David to hear, but he caught it and smiled. Max cleared his throat and his tone became harsh again. “Look, I know Nikki, like, recruited you to die with me or whatever, but you didn’t have to do this. I’ll be fine.”

It was the sort of “I’ll be fine” that hinted at things not at all being fine.

“Max, it’s not death. It’s a wasteland. We’ll be _fine_.” David put on a bright smile and tried his best to laugh carelessly. Or carefully. He didn’t know which.

Max’s eyebrow furrows. “I’d almost forgotten why I hate you so much. This is a good reminder.”

“Oh, gosh.” David never really had full, hearty laughs. He was the kind of person who’s laugh ended as soon at it began - one or two syllables, smiley and snorty. It was the oddest time to laugh repeatedly, but he just couldn’t help himself. He needed to release the tension somehow. “I missed you being a bright young asset to our community and blossoming into the lovely young man you are today.” David’s voice hinted at sarcasm. But it was the joking kind.

“Fuck off!” Max smiles, but just barely. When David doesn’t reply, he frowns again. “It really has been a long time. I mean - I didn’t miss you that much, and you yelling at me every time I swore was hella annoying, but, y’know. It’s familiar.” David liked the appreciation, but he couldn’t get himself to keep smiling about it.

Max looked like a mess.

“You’re all grown up, Max.” David put his head down on the table. He was still exhausted, but he knew that he had to stay up. “I miss taking care of you, but I’m not sure you need anyone to take care of you anymore. I’m just scared.” Max couldn’t get himself to take it as a joke.

David looked like a mess.

They sat there in bitter silence, connected and disconnected simultaneously.

An officer came up to them. Max was still handcuffed from earlier, and stared into the officer’s eyes with a burning hatred. The officer grabbed Max’s cuffs and motioned for David to follow them. He walked up a stairwell and came to a room by the entrance to the bunker, several different locks on the door to keep people from entering. The officer had to let Max go so that he could fiddle with his key. From the mutinous look, it was easy to tell that Max wanted to bash the officer over the head. David put a hand on his shoulder in silent restraint.

“You get 15 minutes in the rec room. Take whatever you think you need.” The officer said, his face blank as the door swung open.

The room was filled with people’s things. Clothing, backpacks, trash bags, all filled with different items that people had wanted to keep with them inside the bunker, only to have them taken away. The officer stood in the doorway as David and Max waded through the mass of stuff. It had been picked through many times by people sent out before them, but David immediately dumped out someone’s backpack, sending binders and papers tumbling to the floor. Max went through pockets, finding gum and matches and various other little things.

They pushed over one of the bigger piles to try and get to the stuff on the bottom that hadn’t been touched as much. Max found someone’s half-loaded gun, which looked old and not at all in working condition. David immediately took it from him.

“Hey! I have to have some way to defend myself!” Max said angrily.

“You’re not going to _shoot_ anything, Max.”

“You won’t either! You’ll probably just try to hug a giant mutated bear to get it to stop attacking us!”

“I’m the adult.”

Max almost stomped his foot and crossed his arms, but it wasn’t worth the argument anyway. “Fine. Whatever, camp man.”

David was silent. He dug through a pile of clothing until he found a green shirt. _His_ green shirt. Cheaply printed, stained irreversibly in several areas, and the front tree-shaped decal was peeling off and chipping. His Camp Campbell counselor shirt.

“-can you stop having a moment over there and get a move on looking for something we can actually use and not your dirty old tee shirt?” Max interrupted David’s thoughts. David apologized under his breath, and stuffed the tee-shirt into the backpack. Max silently picked up a hoodie. They both had their comforts.

The pickings were miserable, but David tried to make the best of it, and they did end up scraping a few lucky finds - the matches from earlier, a nice metal water bottle, and other odds and ends that would hopefully be useful. After their time was up, they were given a basic survival kit - a couple of plastic water bottles, those weird foily survival blankets. Things like a whistle and blanket seemed kinda useless, but they took it anyway.

The bunker doors were large and square, made of thick, fortified metal. They were released, and Max pushed them open with David just behind.

Then, for the first time in a half year, they saw the outside.

The doors shut loudly behind them.

It was an extremely bright day out; the kind of day that makes it so you can’t look up without squinting or closing your eyes. As far as they could see or hear, there was silence. No birds. No rustle of trees. The mountain they were standing on had been reduced to a bare rock, covered in rubble. Other than the barest hint of brown and yellow grass under his boots, David could have sworn this was never a field full of wildflowers.

The cars that had been abandoned in the field were a peculiar sight. They were rusty and damaged, and some had hoods or rooves that were caved in. Either way, all of them looked useless and like lousy shelter.

Surrounding them, half-dead, warped trees stretched in all directions against a cloudless blue sky. The air was cool and spring-like.

“We should...look for our town.” Max said finally, his sneakers shifting against the gravel underneath. “If there’s anything left of it.”

A cool breeze blew through their hair.

“Sure.”

They traveled down the mountain, in the direction (questionably) that Lingua would be. The trees were mostly the same, other than being dead and twisted, and both Max and David were able to keep a loose navigation, but it was all - _different_. They took in the sights, trying to absorb the fact that these were their woods. Max used to run through these woods with his friends, and David used to take hikes and teach classes about the forest there.

Soon they came to a bit of raised ground that jutted out from the mountain that Max recognized as the place he’d been sitting 6 months before, smoking pot. He wandered over to it, and David followed.

“What’s wrong?” David asked curiously. Max walked to the edge. It was only a 6ish foot drop, but he still felt tall and in charge, standing on the edge of the little cliff wearing someone else’s hoodie in the middle of the wasteland.

“I know where we are,” Max replied quietly. He walked around the cliff, and they continued down the mountain, with Max in the lead.  
David stared at the back of Max’s head. He was so grown up now. David could remember him at 10 years old, swearing and wreaking havoc just to get on David’s nerves. How badly David wanted to adopt him, but wasn’t eligible. How at 11, he moved in with a different family in the neighborhood. How he refused to go to camp next summer but would still come to see David every so often, even if it was just to get a pizza and talk about cat videos. How at 12, he would come over just to walk and play with David’s new dog, which got hit by a car when he was 13. How at 14, he was caught smoking in his high school bathroom and got dangerously close to having to move away.

And now, at 15, he was setting out into an unknown land, with his old camp counselor from 5 years ago following him like a lost dog.

“I know you’re staring at me!” Max yelled, hunching his shoulders. David smiled a soft, close-lipped smile and shook his head.

“Now, Max. If I can’t look at you, how am I going to know whether you’re alive or dead?”

“You can _look_ at me. Just don’t stare, you fuckin’ pedophile.” Max turned and glared at David, but it didn’t have any weight behind it. “Maybe that’s why you like working with kids so much. So you can stick your little dick in them.”

David looked sickened and horrified at the same time. “ _Max!_ I did nOT come out here to let you make obscene comments about me all day!”

“Fine. If that’s the way you want it, David.” Max only relented because maybe that had been a low blow. For not seeing David in 6 months, at least. He had to warm David up first.

Max snickered. _Low blow_. God, he really was immature. Even in the face of being stuck in a nuclear fallout zone, walking to their most likely destroyed town.

They continued in an awkward state of in-between.

That is, until David saw something. “Max. Max, look.” He said frantically, grabbing the teen’s shoulder and shaking his gaze from the ground.

Slowly rising on the horizon was a wall. It was tall, made of many thick, full-sized tree trunks. Surrounding the area that they would have started entering town. There was a man with a buzz cut and a rifle slung over his shoulder standing lazily against the wall, looking like a patrol or guard of some sort, but it was relieving to both Max and David - it was a sign that maybe their town had survived. A resurgence of civilization.

“Holy _shit_.” Max said, picking up his pace. This got the attention of the patrol man, who immediately stopped leaning against the wall and leveled his weapon at them. David turned slightly to hide his hand slowly reaching up to the side of his backpack, where his hands groped around desperately until he found the handle of the gun. Just in case.

“Stop! Where are you going?” The man yelled, approaching them with long strides. He was looking at David - who remembered that he was the adult, even though Max was kind of leading him - and David cleared his throat, dropping both hands and straightening his back.

“We’re travellers. We’re looking for a town? I’m looking for my family.”

The man looked at Max. “And the kid?”

Max’s eyes settled into a pissed glare when he was called a kid, but he was smart enough to keep his mouth shut.

“He’s my son. Adopted.” David replied quickly. The man raised an eyebrow, but shrugged. He didn’t relax his gun.

“Well, yeah, this is a city. Of sorts. You can’t get in unless you’re clean, though.”

David stared blankly at him. “I’m sorry? Do you mean, like, not on drugs?”

“No. _Clean._ You ain’t one of them Infecteds.” The man said gruffly. David pretended to know what he was talking about, a drawn-out “ahhhh” that adults do when they don’t want to look stupid. “So I’m gonna have to check you both. Mandatory. Then, if you’re clean, I’ll tell you where the entrance is.”

David didn’t know what the check consisted of, but the man had a long gun, so he thought it was probably best to comply.

“Kid first. Hands behind your head.”

Max slowly put his hands behind his head. The man grabbed some sort of light from his pocket and in turn held Max’s eyes forcefully open, shining the light in each one for a few seconds. As soon as the man was done, Max swore and rubbed his eyes.

“He’s good. You next,” the man said, pointing at David. David nodded fearfully. He didn’t even know what the man was looking for, but he put his hands behind his head and tilted back so that the man could shine the painful light in each one of his eyes. “You’re good to go.”

Both David and Max sighed with relief.

After rubbing his eyes, David smiled, trying to look friendly. “Do you know where to get into the town?” He asked kindly.

“Yeah. Follow the wall, all the way down that way. Should be a big gate, and some people there.” the man said, pointing to his right. “They’ll check you better down there. Also, here’s a tip - you’ll want to have a weapon on you. Sometimes the infecteds like to crowd around, but that’s mostly at night. Stay safe.”

And with that, Max and David were off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who tf are the infected? Idk, but find out...in a few days. Hopefully. When I finish the second half of this long, boring chapter that is 90% long-winded descriptions and reminiscing and shitty foreshadowing. ANYWAY,, THANKS FOR READING hh


	5. interlude i

 

It’s a funny thing, paradise.

Where _is_ it? Simply where we desire most? Or is it an entity, just an idea?

David closed his exhausted eyes against the harsh sun. They’d been following this line of trees for what felt like hours, but must’ve been only a few minutes. He’d only gotten a couple hours of sleep over the last few days, and David was starting to think that maybe he _should_ give the gun to Max, because there was no way he’d be able to shoot it properly with the way that sleep was dragging his eyelids down, down, _down_ . Plus, he needed to piss, _really_ badly.

He wanted to rest. That would be paradise. But Max continued trudging along in front of him, oblivious to David’s nodding off.

It was ten minutes later that they came into view of a place where the wall of trees stopped and several people defended a chain-link fence, covered in barbed wire. Once they got within 50 feet of the gate, one of the people standing there put her hand on her holster and walked over to them. ~~She had shoulder-length blonde hair tied up in a ponytail, almost like~~ **SmVuLCBpdCBzZWVtcyBhcyB0aG91Z2ggaXTigJlzIHRpbWUgdG8gYWN0LiBJ4oCZdmUgZ2l2ZW4gZXZlcnl0aGluZyB0byBiZSB3aXRoIHlvdS4gWW914oCZcmUgdGhlIG9ubHkgb25lIHRoYXQgdW5kZXJzdGFuZHMgbWUuIFdoYXQgSSBhbS4gVGhleeKAmXZlIGJyb2tlbiBtZS4gTXkgYnJhaW4gZG9lc27igJl0IHdvcmsgcmlnaHQgYW55bW9yZSwgSmVuLCBhbmQgSWYgSSBkb27igJl0IGdldCBvdXQgb2YgaGVyZSB0aGV54oCZcmUgZ29pbmcgdG8ga2lsbCBtZS4gSGVscCBtZS4gDQo=** She had shoulder length dreads and tan skin.

“What’s your business here?” She asked, in the same detached manner that the man they’d just talked to before had. Her fingers still lingered over the handle to her gun.

“We’re travelling. We’re looking to see if we can get inside...this is where we used to live. Is it a settlement or something now?” Max looked back at David, who looked like he was struggling to think straight, so he took the conversation into his own hands. Something was wrong.

“Yes, we’re...rebuilding of sorts. We can grant you entry inside. Who’s he?” The woman looked stern. Max tried to smile.

“He’s my dad. He’s...sick, and I think we just need somewhere to sleep. He needs to rest, and he’ll be, ah, back on his feet!” Max said. He attempted to play up the “I’m just a kid” part of himself, gazing into the woman’s dark eyes.

She nodded. “Okay. We’re gonna have to check your bag. My name is Lex, by the way.”

David barely registered it, but he took the heavy, heavy, backpack off of his shoulders and gave it to Max, who suddenly appreciated the fact that David had offered to carry it much more.

“I’m Max, and this is David.” Max replied, handing the backpack to the woman.

“Drink from this.” Lex handed a metal canteen to David, who nodded and took it meekly. Max watched her squat on the ground and go through all of their stuff. She didn’t express any particular concern about the gun, but Max ripped his gaze from her as David started to cough and sputter behind him.

“What is _in that?_ Oh, _lord_ that tastes terrible!” David had his eyes squeezed shut tightly, spitting on the ground frantically.

“Relax. It’s just water. Give it to the kid.” Lex said, not hesitating as she finished up her bag check. Max took the canteen nervously, bringing it to his lips before deciding to just get it over with and gulping it down.

Moments later, he was dry-heaving, tears forming at the corners of his eyes. It tasted gritty, like drinking straight rust or chemicals. “There is NO way in absolute HELL that is water.” He choked, and Lex laughed. Her posture seemed to have relaxed a little after they both drank, and she finished up searching the backpack, zipping it back up and giving it to David.

“It really is! We put a harmless chemical in it to test and see if you’re Infected or not, since it’s hard to tell otherwise. It tastes terrible to you if you’re safe and fine. But Infecteds can’t taste the chemical, so they don’t react.” She said, standing up and taking her canteen back from Max. “You both passed.”

She lead them over to the gate, where another girl opened it from the inside.

Max could see their town through the holes in the gate.

How is it that beautiful houses can go from intact to condemned in a half year?

It was a far street in a neighborhood that Max didn’t recognize well. Last he knew, **RGFuaWVsIHdhcyBsaXZpbmcgdGhlcmUu** it was Arms - or Neil, but it felt weird to have two Neils in the same friend group - that lived in his area. The houses were patched together, some half-caved, others boarded up. They must have been on the edge of the blast radius.

Everything looked the same. Damaged, but not destroyed. It hurt Max’s head to look at it.

David looked up as Lex walked over to him. “You know, there’s a missionary camp twenty minutes walk from here, if you’re going fast.”

“A...missionary...camp?” David asked curiously. “Jesus?”

Lex laughed. “Not really. I don’t know. **Tm9uZSBvZiB1cyByZWFsbHkga25vdyB3aGF0IGdvZXMgb24gaW4gdGhvc2UgY2FtcHMuIA==** They’re for kids, you’ll be able to make sure your son is clothed and fed while you figure out a place to stay and what to do.” She said. “It’s a good idea, a lot of parents drop kids off there. Safety, food - hell, I’d go there if I could.”

David glanced at Max, who was listening in on this conversation. “What do you think, Max? I’d let me have more time to find...help. Gwen, and other people.”

Max absolutely did not want to leave David, but if it would make things easier, the option did seem tempting and like the right thing to do. His mouth settled into a grim line, and he nodded.

“Are you sure?”

“Whatever, Da-ad!” Max almost said David, but corrected it to dad just in time. “Come on, let’s just go.”

Hearing Max call him dad made David smile and reminisce about the times that he actually believed they were going to be family. But he shook it off and tried to focus on Lex. “Would you mind giving us directions?” He asked sweetly, and she made a face.

“I’m afraid I can’t give you a step-by-step, but here, come with me to the gate-” -she lead them outside the gate and to the corner of the tree wall- “-it’s roughly that direction. It’s a big camp, you’ll see it for sure. From what I’ve heard, it’s a **aG9ycmlibGUsIGRlYWRseQ==** lovely place! For being in the middle of fallout, I mean. But still.”

“Thank you, m’am. Thank you.” David shook her hand, and then they were off. Again. David still felt sick and exhausted, but there was nothing he could do.

“I hope it’s actually an ok camp,” Max said blandly.

“Me too.” David agreed.

They walked in silence for a **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** long time.

Over bare rock and leveled fields. Past corpses and other things that David wouldn’t be able to forget for a long time.

Whenever Max noticed David starting to stumble, he would say something snarky or lewd or offensive to get him awake. David appreciated this.

It felt like paradise seeing the tents, set up so nicely in the distance. They’re not the flimsy sort of tents that you think of when you go cabin - these are solid, platform tents, with wood bases and thick canvas walls that don’t yield to the wind. There’s at least ten of them in a row on the one side that Max and David are facing, and a flag one end, along with a differently shaped tent, gives away the entrance. They walked until they saw a tent with the walls partially clipped back, and people inside. There was a small table, and a youngish man - 22, maybe - sat down at it.

Max turned to David.

“Well.” He said quietly. It’d been only hours since Max’d seen David for the first time in months. And now, it might be the last time they ever saw each other again. It all felt like too much. “Here it is.”

David took Max into his arms and they stood like that, hugging. There was a long, long pause. David looked like he was going to cry as they pulled apart.

“Sob and I’ll slap you.” Max said gruffly. He drew himself up to his full height and headed in the direction of the tent.

David watched him go, his sadness, his fear, his sleepiness - all reflected in his eyes. Then, when Max disappeared inside the tent, he finally started to head back in the dire **SmVuLCB0aGlzIGlzIHRoZSBsYXN0IG5vdGUgSSBjYW4gd3JpdGUgdG8geW91LiBJdOKAmXMgdG9vIG11Y2guIEnigJltIGJhcmVseSBob2xkaW5nIG9udG8gbXlzZWxmLCBvbnRvIHRoZXNlIGVtb3Rpb25zLiBUaGV5IGFyZSB0ZWxsaW5nIG1lIHRoYXQgSSBhbSBiaWdnZXIgdGhhbiBteSBmZWFyLCBidXQgdGhleSBrZWVwIHRyeWluZyB0byBtYWtlIG1lIGFmcmFpZC4gSSBrZWVwIHRyeWluZyB0byBoYW5nIG15c2VsZiwgYnV0IGl0IG5ldmVyIHdvcmtzLiBUaGV5IGFsd2F5cyB3YXRjaCBtZS4gVGhleSBhbHdheXMgd2F0Y2ggbWUuIFRoZXkgYWx3YXlzIHdhdGNoDQo=** tion he’d came from.

David neared the long line of platform tents when something caught his eye.

There, slipping outside of the tent that Max had just entered, was Danie **RGFuaWVs**. David felt sure of it. He’d never felt more sure of anything in his life. He felt his mouth making the familiar shapes, the familiar syllables.

“Daniel?” He spoke loudly. More confidently than he was expecting. “Danny, is that you?”

The man looked up at him, and immediately David _knew_ it was Daniel. Those icy, washed out eyes. Even from far away. But he had to be sure.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Daniel said, and he sounded wrong. Like he was German. And colder than David had ever heard him speak.

“Danny, what are you talking about?” David felt the words slip out. Goddamned 3 hours of sleep over two days. It was miserable.

Then, Jen came out of the side of the tent. Blonde hair tied up, pretty tan skin - she put her hand on Daniel’s shoulder. “Pardon me, I don’t think my brother made this clear enough - you’re mistaken. This is Darek. Father Darek. I’m Johanna. We’re German immigrants, here running this camp, and I assure you that we never go anywhere without each other and I’ve never seen you before in my life. Now, sir, I’m afraid that this camp is for children only, so I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

David shrunk back. He felt like crying, and stuttering an unlikely excuse, he found himself running off. Running, harder than he ever thought he could. He sobbed and sobbed and just let himself cry, and all he wanted was ~~Daniel~~ **SGF2ZSB5b3UgZXZlciBicm9rZW4gc29tZW9uZSwgSmVuPyBIYXZlIHlvdSBzdGVwcGVkIG9uIHRoZWlyIGJhY2sgYW5kIHNtYXNoZWQgdGhlaXIgc2t1bGw/IEJlY2F1c2UgdGhleSB3ZXJlIHJpZ2h0LiBJdCBmZWVscyBzbyBnb29kIHRvIGh1cnQgdGhlbS4gRXZlbiBiZXR0ZXIgdGhhbiBodXJ0aW5nIG15c2VsZi4gVGhleSB3ZXJlIHJpZ2h0IGFib3V0IGV2ZXJ5dGhpbmcuIFNvIEkga2lsbGVkIHRoZW0uIA==** Max or even just _someone_ to listen to him.

No one listened to him.

**SSB3YXMgYm9ybiB0byBiZSBhIEdvZCwgSmVuLiBXZeKAmXZlIGFsd2F5cyBiZWVuIHNvIG9ibGl2aW91cywgd29yc2hpcHBpbmcgdGhlc2UgZ29kcy4gSSB3YXMgbWVhbnQgdG8gYmUgb25lIG9mIHRoZW0uIEkga25vdyBpdC4gSSBkb27igJl0IGZlZWwgYW55bW9yZS4gTm90IGxpa2UgdGhlIG90aGVycy4gQ29tZSB3aXRoIG1lLiBUaGV54oCZcmUgZGVhZC4gVGhleSBjYW7igJl0IGV4cGVyaW1lbnQgb24gdXMgYW55bW9yZS4gV2UgY2FuIGJlIEdvZHMuIFdlIGNhbiBleHBlcmltZW50IG9uIHRoZW0uIFRoaXMgbGlmZSBpcyBvdXIgZ2FtZS4g**

Co̖͈m̦̱͞e̹ ̦̳̣̼̩͔̙w̢̗̳i̶t̢̟̟̥h̭̖ ̬̣̗͡ͅm̧͔̲̹̯̺͕e̳͡ ̣̥̯̲̠̭a͏̠̝͉̠̠̗n̶̘͍̬͇̥̭ͅd͖̺͎ ͏͙̜̤̪͎͙̺w̟̟̳͍̩̳͉e҉̳̥̪'̭̜l͍̻͕̥̤̟ͅl͉̥ ͖̥p̩͔̪̟͢ḷ̬̣a̢y̱͢ ҉͚̫͉͓̦̲̯it͙.̞̞̘̭͟ ̬͓͍̘  
  
---  
  
 


	6. Struggle// part ii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another short chapter, sorry guys. But I've been busy, and I've never written Jasper before? He's hard to write. Anyway, Jasper has Autism (I'm still figuring out how to better flesh out these in the writing itself - don't worry, it'll hopefully get better), which make him act a lot younger than he actually is and give him a lot of anxiety/breakdowns when it comes to dealing with people and situations like that. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy this, however short and sparsely written it is!

Daniel always felt so free with David. So free, that when a beer was pushed into his hands, he actually drank it. He rarely ingested any sort of intoxicating substance, as he felt that it impeded his mental clarity, but it was late, and David insisted. They were alone in the counselor's cabin (Gwen and Jen stayed in a part of the main building, to split up guys and girls), just barely tipsy, in their pajamas, and smiling at each other like fools. Daniel _felt_ like a fool.

But every time he did, he would remind himself that this was only for the summer. And it just felt so nice, to have someone to care about, even if caring was the biggest sin he could commit. So they sat, David on his bed and Daniel in a swivel chair drawn up next to it, being fools.

David stared at Daniel like he was someone he’d never met before, holding his beer in both hands, sitting with his knees drawn up to his chest. “Who are you, Daniel?”

“Ah, aren’t I Daniel? Don’t you already know me?”

David hesitated. “Wait - No, who _are_ you? I feel like we haven’t met _enough._ ”

“I’m god,” Daniel said simply. He tried to take another sideways sip of beer with a straight face, but burst out laughing halfway though at the surprise written on David’s features.

“What does that make me, then?” David asked, wide-eyed.

“My vice, I suppose.”

“Oh, gosh…” David cast a small frown at the bed under him. “That doesn’t sound like a good thing.”

Daniel smiled. It wasn’t, but it felt good anyway. He’d never been so indulgent with himself.

“Trust me, it definitely is.” He replied soothingly, putting a hand on David’s ankle. David laughed - one of his little laughs, the kind that end right as they begin - and looked up, smiling. Daniel momentarily panicked - he could see the tears in David’s eyes, collecting in the corners and in his eyelashes -

“I’m so happy,” David murmured, the tears overflowing and dripping down his chin. Daniel relaxed, reaching forward and wiping David’s tears away.

“Hey, now…”

“I just, I never thought I could have... _this_.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I, uhh...I just, I’ve never...dated? A guy before. Most of the time, it’s never the right person. It never _feels_ right.” David leaned his head against Daniel’s hand and closed his eyes. “This feels so good. I never thought I’d ever get someone so gentle, or attractive, or...perfect.”

Daniel knew that he would have never started anything with David if he didn’t have his own underlying causes. But, well, it was hard to think about - David was so much more. It was so hard to think about killing him, or the end of the summer. So he pushed everything to the back of his mind and stayed in the moment.

“Of course. You can have...this. If you want it.” Daniel crawled onto David’s bed, sitting next to him. David shifted so that he could rest his head on Daniel’s shoulder. They sat quietly.

And it was just so _easy._

“I do,” David whispered.

Daniel smiled and closed his eyes.

“Good.”

 

_Four Years Later_

_After the Fall_

 

David sat down in the middle of the wasteland. It was an odd move, but he just couldn’t seem to keep moving. He was just so tired.

He leaned over his backpack, coming through it. David knew that sleeping there wouldn’t be the best idea, but - he’d been given a small pack of food, and inside, he found a small packet of instant coffee grounds. There was no good way to make it, though, and he didn’t want to waste the few water bottles that he had.

_Coffee grounds are caffeinated, right? They’re what make the coffee._

David shrugged. He tore the packet open. Then, he funnelled the grounds right into his mouth. It left a terrible taste in his mouth. To compensate, David took one of the untouched water bottles from the backpack and drank a little - a tiny sip, just enough to clear his mouth - and closed it carefully so not a drop would spill. He was actually fairly good at self-sustenance, despite what many people thought about him - years of camping and being alone in nature had given him skills that people generally didn’t have. This was just...a little different.

David smiled brightly, letting another early spring breeze wash over him. He opened his eyes extra-wide and ran his fingers through the sparse weeds and grass growing in cracks of the rock beneath him.

He inhaled deeply, held that breath, and exhaled slowly.

This was doable. David would go back to the town, find someone he knew, look for his family (they couldn’t be _that_ far), and Gwen. Then, he would find a place to stay. Somewhere he could defend. After that, he would go back to get Max. They could be a family.

Gosh, he’d always wanted that.

David had a lousy view from where he was sitting. It was mostly various levels of dirt and exposed rock, with the occasional hardy plant peeking out of the ground. It all looked raw and bare and - _dry._ David didn’t know what he’d expected coming out of the bunker. Giant, mutated animals oozing green? The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Raiders that killed everyone and burned down whatever was left over? Some part of him imagined just a flat desert for miles, or a giant crater that covered the whole of where they lived.

David felt somewhat more awake. Maybe it was the instant coffee grounds, or giving himself a pep talk, but it didn’t matter. He held onto his plan like a lifeline and began to walk the direction he hoped would take him back to the settlement that used to be his town.

When he got there, Lex stood by the gate and let him back in.

“Welcome back.” She said casually. “Can I direct you anywhere? Looking for something?”

David was about to tell her no and head to his house again, but he hesitated.

“Yes, actually. Is there anywhere for people to stay? Like, a designated area or something?” He asked. “I, uhh, used to live here, but I doubt my old house is still intact.”

Lex shrugged. “Not really. Most people just set up homemade forts or tents in any free space, including houses or stores.” She replied. “If you lived here before, I assume you know where the high school is. I heard that a lot of people stay in rooms there, but it’s also the closest thing to a hospital we have, so there’s a lot of dead and sick people there. I wouldn’t suggest it.”

She looked up as a man motioned for her by the gate, and Lex gave David a small smile before leaving. “Good luck!”

David’s hand tightened around the straps of his backpack. After vaguely considering the  option of trying to find a safe place to stay at the high school, he returned to his original idea of heading back toward his own home. Using the same ‘shortcut’ that Max showed him, David walked until he found the clearing behind his house, with a clear view of the boarded up windows and back door. The dull red paint on the back porch was peeling horribly, and the pretty white sides of the house were covered in dirt and ash.

But it was home.

David walked up to the porch, remembering the spring morning - must’ve been nearly two years ago, now - he’d painted it, and a year after that when he was mowing the lawn for the first time after a long winter.

There were so many memories, but now it was all dirt and weeds, peeling paint and stripping wood.

David walked up onto the back porch. The doors had been hastily boarded up with large thin sheets. He banged on a top one, but the wood was solid, and though it bent and strained against his fists it wouldn’t crack.

He refused to give up. David left his backpack on the porch and tore out the rusty chicken fence that surrounded the bottom of his old porch, crawling underneath. There were several bags of planting soil and a folded tarp, and underneath those David found what he was looking for - a dirty hatchet. It had been blunted from years of use, but it would work.

The flimsy boards blocking David from the inside of his house didn’t stand a chance. They split almost immediately, whole chunks splintering off as he hacked at it continuously. When there was a good sized hole in the board, he dropped the axe and grabbed the gun out of his backpack before putting it on.

The inside of the house was completely silent. David took a step inside. The floorboards groaned underneath his boots.

The kitchen and dining room were the first thing in view. The dining table seemed untouched (though, unsettlingly, the originally white carpet underneath was covered with what looked like dried blood), but the kitchen was entirely ransacked. The cupboards and cabinets were thrown open, pots and pans scattered over the floor, plates and cups smashed against the granite countertops.

“Gosh,” David whispered. His #1 Dad mug was sitting in shards on the electric stove, and it weighed on his heart like an anvil.

The fridge was mostly empty, other than a carton of milk that David didn’t _dare_ touch (the smell was disturbing enough) and a cup filled with mold. The freezer was similar - nothing of value left inside.

David wasn’t sure what he’d expected. It was hard to expect something from a situation that he’d never experienced before, but, well - it certainly wasn’t all of this.

He didn’t even know what Infected were. At first he thought of zombies, but that probably wasn’t accurate. It was probably just a random sickness. Radiation poisoning, maybe.

David continued through the kitchen by double-checking all of the cupboards, looking for something, anything useful. They were completely empty, spiderwebs and thick layers of dust aside.

The living room was next.

He kept clutching onto the handle of his pistol with sweaty palms, moving slowly through an empty hallway and into the carpeted living room until he paused.

Something fell with a thud behind him.

David whipped around, finger pressed tight against the trigger, aiming for the head-

“Davey?” Standing there was a man about David’s age, with dark blonde curls falling over his forehead, pale blue eyes, and a quivering bottom lip. “Davey, it’s me!”

“Jasper!” David let out a long sigh of relief, dropping the gun to his side and pulling Jasper into a hug. “Oh, lord, I was terrified. Don’t _scare_ me like that, okay?”

“Oh, geez, I’m sorry, buddy.”

“It’s alright. I’m  just glad that you’re here, okay?” David ruffled Jasper’s hair and stepped away. “How’d you get here, though?”

Jasper turned around and the two men looked at a broken stick on the ground, covered with markings and duct tape on one end - evidently, the thing that had dropped and alerted David to Jasper’s presence in the first place. “Er, I was supposed to go back home after my life coach meeting when I heard the sirens. I had one of my panic attacks, and I went back home, but ma and pa were gone, so...you told me to come here if I ever needed anything or if my parents weren’t home, but - you were gone too, and I didn’t want to move around anymore, so I just…” He paused to go pick up the stick before continuing. “God, I’m so sorry. Okay. I didn’t want to move around anymore, so I hid out in your basement, and then your bedroom.”

“That’s very brave. Where’d you find that stick?” David asked patiently.

“In your storage. There are...things...people...that would come into the house? And I would just freeze up and cry, but mostly they would go through the kitchen and leave. I used to lock the doors until someone broke the back ones.” Jasper said hesitantly. “I don’t go outside. At night is when it’s worst. It’s best to stay upstairs.”  
They went upstairs to David’s old bedroom, which had become Jasper’s hideout. Jasper had crudely nailed a bedsheet over the window, and the corners of the room seemed to be designated for different things - one had a bare number of blankets, pillows, and sheets from all around the house stacked in it, the other a large store of canned goods, instant meals, and water bottles (David recognised most of them from their family’s emergency supply in the entry closet), and one with various books and magazines stacked in large piles.

“Jasper - I didn’t know you read.” He said, eyebrows furrowed.

Jasper shrugged and walked to the pile of food, sitting down.

“I had a lot of time. I know I don’t have the greatest memory, or attention span, or any of that - especially when I’m not on my meds - but it’s nice to have a distraction. You have some good books.” He said, finding a can of spaghettios and throwing it to David, who caught it. “Hey! Radical catch, dude!”

“Thanks.” David said, smiling.

“We should make spaghetti-ohs for dinner. We’ll have to eat them cold, but they’re really good either way.”

David nodded. He actually couldn’t _believe_ that Jasper had survived so long. He didn’t want to be impolite, but...for a man with so many problems, he seemed to be doing just fine. It was times like this when David wondered if Jasper would have been better off alone all along - if it was the people in his life really babying him and injuring his growth. Worse, if David himself was one of those people. Some sort of ‘enabler’ for Jasper’s...social issues.

“Okay. Let’s have noodles. But first, let me patch up the wood on the back doors. Stay here, okay?” David left Jasper there, finding all of his tools and plywood in the basement. He patched up the door, and when he was satisfied, he went back upstairs.

They sat in Jasper’s corner of blankets and ate the Dora-shaped noodles from a pot. Jasper rambled on and on, and David was as attentive as he could be, but he felt himself getting drowsy again.

“Hey, Jasper, mind if I sleep a little, I’m, ah-” David yawned and wiped his eyes, putting his spoon back into the pot. “-I’m really tired.”  
“Oh, for sure, dude! Make yourself comfortable.” Jasper took the empty pot, put his own spoon into it, and left it on the stripped mattress.

David curled up in the blankets and closed his eyes.

He fell asleep almost immediately.

 

When David woke up, it was dark outside.

Jasper was curled up next to him, but very much awake.

“Oh! Jasper. What’s got you up?” David whispered, rubbing the mucus from his eyes and squinting in the darkness.

Jasper just pressed a shaking finger to his lips.

David could hear it now.

Someone was banging, over and over, on the back door. Shouting. Screaming to be let in. It was disturbing, and David’s heart ached to go down there and let them in, but this - all of Jasper’s hard work would be ruined. They might kill them. And survival came first, always.

David closed his eyes again, clasping both of Jasper’s hands in his own.

“Shh. It’s gonna be alright. Just relax, okay?” He said soothingly. “We’re safe here.”

“Davey,” Jasper whispered. “Will you shoot them for me?”

There was silence as David stared at Jasper, taken aback. Sweet Jasper, who loved nature and even if he was unenthusiastic about something, he’d keep the grumbling to a minimum. He was so sweet.

“Well, no, Jasper, I can’t just shoot people.”  
“No, no!” Jasper said, frustrated. He drew his hands away from Davids and covered his ears, squeezing his eyes shut. “You don’t - I - just - they’re Infecteds! I’ve wanted to shoot them for so long. They come back every night. They’re going to die slow and painfully and I don’t want them to suffer anymore!”

David’s eyes widened. “They’re Infected? What does that mean?”

“I-I’m not sure exactly what it does to you - but I do know that when you’re Infected, you start to go insane, really slowly. Like it’s eating away at your brain until you’re completely unhinged. And - you stay up really late at night, and you don’t like the sun, so they get really tired during the day. But they’re not zombies, I don’t think they eat people - unless they do-”

Everything was starting to click into place. At least, a little bit.

David closed his eyes, thinking over everything. And...he owed Jasper a lot.

“Alright, Jasp.” He said finally, sighing. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Picking up his gun from the other side of the room, David checked to make sure the safety was off. Then, as quietly as he could, he stepped out into the upstairs hallway, sneaking along until he got to the window that overlooked the backyard.

Sure enough, there was a ragged-looking person slamming against the newly boarded up back doors, howling incoherent words at the top of his lungs. David slid open the window slowly.

 _This person is obviously suffering_ , he told himself. _His life isn’t going to get any better_.

He look a deep breath and leveled his aim. If David missed, he would never forgive himself.

As he pulled the trigger, he shut both eyes as tightly as humanly possible, and then some.

There was a bang, and David yelped in pain - he hadn’t prepared for the recoil, and he was sure it would leave a bruise. But more importantly - the shouting stopped.

It was over.

The man lay limp on David’s back porch, twitching slightly. David was grossly fascinated and disturbed at the same time; he felt like he was going to puke, but managed to hold it in and close the window, walking quickly back into Jasper’s room.

“Is that better?” He asked, trying not to let his voice shake too much. Jasper looked so relieved, pulling David into another hug when he sat down.

“Yes. Yes, thank you so much.” Jasper was crying, holding David tightly. “I feel so much better.”

A weary smile crossed David’s lips. He had hunted avidly in his teenage years, bigger game like deer and even the occasional moose - but a human. That was...something else.

He tried to get the image of the man lying out on the porch out of his head by looking into Jasper’s happy eyes.

“I need to go back to sleep.” David said, holding his head in both hands. Jasper nodded.

“Let’s do that,” He replied.

So they held each other, David’s cold hands still shaking, and slept.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ALsO!!! The code in the last chapter was Base64! 
> 
> Here's a converter, if you want to go back and read it in it's entirety: https://www.base64decode.org/


	7. Strain//

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ANNOUNCEMENT?? OF SORTS?? ok so this AU has a page on the Camp Camp Fanon Wikia. It's not totally complete, but there's a lot of lore and stuff there. Bear in mind that this story doesn't follow the original plotline of the AU, but rather an altered version where everyone is older and a lot of the little scenes are cut out. Anyway, the link to that is here - http://campcampfanon.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_AU 
> 
> Special appreciation to the beautiful ppl who give kudos and leave the sweetest comments oh my god it keeps me going yall

 

It was a rainy evening. Dark clouds covered the sky, and David could hear the slap of raindrops on his windows as he talked with Daniel. 

“I’ve never been tempted by anything in my life.” He boasted. “Except for maybe the call of nature.” 

“Come on, you can’t tell me you’ve never been tempted by something.” Daniel said quietly. David stared at the peach-fuzz corners of Daniel’s lips, the part that looked sort and pretty and so utterly kissable.

“Mm...only by you…” David reached for Daniel’s mouth, hands tangled in his shirt. Daniel wasn’t overly affectionate with David, but small, soft kisses on the mouth - it felt so nice to be pushed up against the bed and kissed. 

Daniel’s mouth tasted different from anything David had ever tasted. Like blood and mint gum, and David liked it. 

David liked listening to Daniel talk. His sentences were beautiful, each one carefully thought out and a work of art in its own respect. Whether it was about woods or kids or religion or life in general, David would fall into the rhythm of Daniel’s talking. It was comforting, any time of day. 

“Tell me a bedtime story,” David whispered into the darkness, breaking the faint, endless loops of the waves slapping against the dock and the sound of cicadas singing their nightly song, droned out by the rain hitting their window.  

A murmured reply, close to David’s ear. “I suppose. It won’t be a happy one, though.”

“It’s okay.” David squeezed Daniel’s arm, which was wrapped around him, gently. “It’s okay, you’re here with me, right?”

“Okay. Ah...okay, I’ve got one.” Daniel murmured, patting David’s back. “Once, there was a little boy. His name was...David.” 

David let a smile cross his closed lips, but didn’t say anything or open his eyes. 

“This little boy was very important. He wasn’t special - from a poor family, only six years old, with nothing extraordinary about him - but people thought he was. Different scientists, and doctors, and priests came to the family, offering them money and a better life if only little David would come follow them. His parents were very tempted by this offer, and knowing it would make them happy if they had more income, David agreed to go with one of the priests that came to his house. He didn’t understand what was going to happen, but he knew that they told him that he would be able to see his parents again after a little while. 

 

_ All he had to do was cooperate. That way, everyone won. _

_ Little David sat in a cold carseat in the back of the priest’s car, which looked much too worn out for a man who didn’t have any children. The priest was dressed in all pristine white, making David’s grass-stained Salvation Army jeans and stained tee-shirt look like the grimiest thing in the world. Beside him, a little girl sat. Her name was, ah...Gwen. She looked lethargic and bored.  _

_ “Why are you here?” David whispered. The priest in the front seat had white-blonde hair and icy blue eyes and it was very intimidating. David didn’t want to get in trouble, or get on the man’s nerves in the slightest.  _

_ Gwen shrugged in response to David’s question, looking out the window. It was nighttime, and all of the stars in the sky called them to sleep. But both stayed wide awake. “This guy came and told my family he’d pay money to be able to run some tests on me. Like I’m a cure for cancer or something.”  _

_ David looked out the window. They drove for a long, long time, until they came to a building that looked like a church. It made sense, considering the man was a priest, he hadn’t said a word the whole time, and the whole thing seemed to be surrounded by a chain link fence topped with barbed wire. The gates of the fence opened for them, and shut behind them.  _

_ David was starting to have a bad, bad feeling about this. But now, well - it was too late for any second thoughts.  _

_ The car came to a stop, tires crunching in the gravel.  _

_ The priest turned toward them.  _

_ “My name is Pastor Pikeman. We’re going to go inside and get you guys cleaned up.”  _

_ David had so many questions, but he held his tongue and watched Gwen, who didn’t seem to waiver. Her jaw was set. She was solid.  _

_ They were forced inside. They didn’t struggle, but it didn’t feel consensual. David wanted to ask if this is where they would be doing the tests, and what kind of tests they’d be, and what the result would do. But he didn’t. He held his tongue as Pastor Pikeman practically dragged them to separate rooms, closing the door behind them.  _

_ Dan-David’s room was all white.  _

_ The walls, the bed, the floor - it hurt his eyes. There was a woman standing next to a chair in one corner, not smiling. She had the same near white hair and blue eyes that Pastor Pikeman did. And they all felt so cold. But David wanted to get it over with, whatever this was, and go back home to his family.  _

_ The first thing she did was shave his hair. Not completely, but to the point David’s fine hair have way to his scalp.  _

_ Next, she bleached his hair. Or, what was left of it, anyway. It went from dirty blonde to a soft, peach-fuzz white. David hated it.  _

_ The last thing she did was point out what looked like a nightgown, lying out for him on the dresser. “Change,” she ordered in a bland tone.  _

_ Then she left.  _

_ David didn’t want to wear a dress, but he changed anyway. Because he was impressionable and kind and just wanted to make everything work. When he saw Gwen again, she was in the same outfit as he, her once-dark hair dyed white-blonde. They held hands, but something wasn’t right - there were men who pulled them apart, pulled them into rooms filled with machinery and a big glass box. _

_ When David asked what they wanted from him, no one replied. He was pushed inside the box glass box and forced to sit up in a chair as they jabbed a needle in his arm, which hurt, but David didn’t mind it. It was all going to be okay. This was all for the best, right? He tried to relax, not to question it. David had always been good at keeping a clear mind, better than anyone he knew. So when sleep tugged at his consciousness, David accepted it.  _

_The nightmares were the worst part. David didn’t think he was afraid of much, but they just felt so real; hands, tearing at his skin, and his mother, his friends, beating him, killing him._ _  
_ _They ran tests on him. They would hook David up to machines and scan his brain and put him to sleep without his knowing, with more of those nightmares, to try and figure out what was wrong with him. But no one could do it. Day after day passed in that miserable room, shut up in the big glass box, and people would come and put him to sleep. More and more machines, different scans, different poison - it was all the same, until there were so many wires and tubes feeding into and out of his body that David was too scared to even move. The dreams changed every time, and each time he died a different way, from drowning in oil or being strangled by a rope and gutted like an animal._

_ “Why are you doing this? What are you looking for?” He would cry, both awake and in his sleep. “I can tell you anything. I’ll tell you everything, I just want to stop now.” But his cries fell on deaf ears. No one ever listened to him, and day after day, week after week, he was subjected to the dreams and sleep. It all blurred together, like an endless day and night, in which time didn’t pass and he lived in limbo, somewhere in between life and death.  _

_ One day, David finally got fed up.  _

_ He ripped the needles and drips from his arm. The stickers from his chest. It was painful, but he’d slowly gotten used to pain. It still wasn’t completely familiar to him, but it was close enough.  _

_ Yet, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get out of the glass box he was trapped in. He was weak, broken, and it was all he could do to scream and cry and kick at the walls. No matter of threatening or pushback could calm him down, but no one really tried to talk to them. Once it became clear that David wouldn’t be able to get out, nobody stayed in the room other than a doctor, who sat in the corner, taking notes.  _

_ After a while, when David had exhausted himself, he wiped his eyes and looked bitterly at the doctor.  _

_ “Who are you?” He asked. He knew better than to expect a reply, but surprisingly, one came.  _

_ “Doctor Miscavige.” The man replied, not looking up from his clipboard.  _

_ Encouraged by this straightforward reply, David continued to ask questions. “Where am I?”  _

_ “In between.”  _

_“Why am I here?”_ _  
_ _There was a pause this time, and the doctor put down his pen. “We are here because you are different,” he said. “There are a lot of children that we think are different, but they never are. But you - you are, David. You have a spiritual energy we’ve never seen before.”_

_ “Why? Why me? For all of this religious...stuff? Why do you have me die every single day?”  _

_ “Because, no matter what happens to you, you don't seem to hold onto any negative energy. You’re supposed to collect it throughout your eternity, but there’s none. They all fizzle out in this pent-up power you have, and bigger and bigger evil spirits are going to come after you as you grow up unless we can release that energy and make you normal. It’s for your own good, David. If you cooperate, we can get you back to your family in as soon as a week.”  _

_ David felt tears start to well up in his eyes again. “I’m trying! I’m trying, but I can’t control whatever this is. I don’t know how.”  _

_ “I know. That’s why we’re doing this. So that it can happen as soon as possible.”  _

_ “What about the other girl? Gwen? Is this happening to her, too?”  _

_ “No. It already worked on her, but she’s decided to stay here for a while longer rather than go back to her family.” Doctor Miscavige met David’s eyes for the first time, and they were blue and cold, like everyone else’s. “Would seeing her calm you down?”  _

_ David nodded, and the doctor pulled a phone out of his pocket and sent someone a message.  _

_ “Okay. Just wait, alright? Everything’s going to be okay, she’ll be here in a little bit.”  _

_ David sat down on the white floor of his glass cage, crying, disheveled, and dirty. It was a long time before he heard the door open (or was it? He didn’t know anymore), but when it did, David stood back up on his wobbly feet and saw Gwen walk in. She still had that dyed blonde hair, but her eyes were different. Her eyes were a bright, cold blue, instead of the purple-ish color they’d been when the two had met. She was dressed head-to-toe in white, in what looked like a schoolgirl’s uniform.  _

_ “...Gwen?” David asked quietly.  _

_ “David.” Gwen said quietly. She leaned up against the glass, her eyes wide. “You look terrible.” _

_ It occured to David for the first time that he hadn’t seen his own face in a long, long time. The reflection on the glass was subpar, and there were no mirrors, so he took Gwen’s word for it.  _

_ He looked at Doctor Miscavige, who was still in the corner. “Can we talk? Alone?” David asked quietly. Again, another surprise - the doctor left them without a single word. “Wow, I never thought he’d trust us.”  _

_ “Probably not you. He trusts me, though.” Gwen said. “Wow, what did they do to you? Your neck -- your face-”  _

_ David shoved some instruments off of a metal tray next to his chair and held the tray up to his face.  _

_ Gwen was right.  _

_ David barely recognised himself. Scars, all over his face and body. He was oddly thin, skin hanging off his bones like loose fabric. The worst part, though, was his neck. Covered in a ring of dark purple, swollen and red and irritated.  _

_ Like all of those times that he’d died in dreams - well, like they weren’t actually dreams. Like he’d died, over and over, in his sleep. Every part of him had some strange marking. Every piece. He’d been shattered, and put back together by someone who didn’t know what he was supposed to look like.  _

 

It was then that Daniel felt David’s sharp breath in his arms. “Gosh. So, they were  _ actually _ killing him over and over?” David’s eyes were wide, his muscles tense. Daniel chuckled. 

“Something like that.” He said in a low tone. It was darker than he meant it to be. David yawned, his back arching into Daniel’s chest, and settled back into their gloves on the bed. “Have you had enough for one night, Davey?” 

David took a moment to reply. “...Maybe...maybe for tonight. But you have to finish tomorrow night...they need to escape. I need to know what happens. And Gwen, how she’s different - oh, boy, you really  _ are _ a brilliant storyteller.” David was mumbling into his pillow, but Daniel could still make most of it out. “How do you come up with this stuff?”

“Well...you could say the most terrifying thing is life itself, huh? Do a little research and you’ll find plenty of real life horror stories. And I do appreciate the compliment. Now, let’s get some sleep.” 

David giggled and made himself comfortable, his eyes closing. 

“Okay, sounds good. Love you.” 

“I love you.” 

 

_ 4 years later _

_ After the Fall _

 

Outside, the rain was black.

Thick, rolling clouds covered the sky, releasing a downpour upon the wasteland below. Max moved his bed to the middle of the tent. He was bothered by the streaks of black that dripped from the corners, travelling slowly across the canvas walls. It was creepy. Like something from a horror movie. It wasn’t surprising to Max - his whole life was basically a horror movie at this point. He curled up on  the cot, wrapping himself up in someone else’s hoodie as the rain bombarded the top of the tent. 

Both Daniel and Jen had casually warned all of the campers to stay inside. Max hated how  _ casual _ they were with everything. Max had met Daniel, but only for the course of a day when he’d almost been slaughtered at ten years old by the man. Max never went back to Camp Campbell another year to experience him as an actual counselor. Now, generally, he was glad about that. Daniel only seemed to tell them things out of obligation, and it was very clear to see that he cared little for the well-being of the campers. If he’d helped run Camp Campbell the same way, that probably would’ve been worse than having David in charge of everything.

Some kids were stupid enough to go out into the black rain. Max could hear them, laughing, and focused on thinking about how stupid they were. If Daniel cared enough to even  _ slightly _ mention it, it must’ve been pretty damn bad. Eventually, when he didn’t hear the other kids anymore, Max was itching to just peek his head out and see if they were turned into gorey corpses or something. It was just rain, right? How bad could it be? But it was so  _ dark. _ It looked like straight poison. Max couldn’t get himself to just  _ touch  _ it. 

When it finally stopped, Daniel came into Max’s tent, looking none too pleased to be there. “The rain has stopped. Johanna told me you weren’t in her baking class. Get back to your daily activities.” 

“Get out of my tent, freakshow.” Max grunted, sitting up and trying to look like he hadn’t huddled up for several hours, unsettled. “I’m going, I’m going.” 

“ _My_ tent. I own it.”   
“Or, do you really? Doesn’t the government run this whole operation?” 

Daniel pushed at his bottom lip with his thumb, arms crossed. “You really think the government runs this show? Sure, they might have sent us out here. But this  _ government _ doesn’t exist anymore. Where have you been the last 6 months? A bunker? Xenu, I  _ hate _ bunker kids.” 

“Why a camp for kids? You’re obviously on some cultist shit, and hate all of us. Why do I always see you at camps?” Max put his hoodie back on and took an authoritative stance that wilted under Daniel’s cold, cold glare. “What happened to the kids who went out into the rain? I bet you killed them, Daniel. I bet you’re gonna kill all of us.” 

“It’s Darek. I’m not a cultist,” Daniel snapped, giving Max a condescending look that made him shiver. “I  _ am  _ the cult. And the rain? They’re just a little sick. I told them not to go out, and I’m the doctor, right?” He tapped his faded armband, covered with a heart and peeling letters that Max supposed must have spelled ‘MEDIC’ at one time. “It’s my problem, not yours. Get back to your activities, boy. It’s not my job to give you life’s answers.” 

Max decided to shut up. For the moment, until the threat of death lowered to under 50%, he didn’t talk. Instead, Max followed Daniel out of the tent and took in a sharp breath. The whole main courtyard-like area was dotted with deep, dark puddles. Many of the canvas tents were stained black, but the sky had cleared to its former light blue. 

The ground in front of the tent neighboring was covered in blood and vomit. The tent, presumably, that of the kids that were ‘sick.’ 

Max didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at all. He didn’t like how he couldn’t read Daniel’s thoughts. How he couldn’t tell what Daniel was thinking, or how he would act, or even make a vague prediction. It was like he was completely unhinged inside, but kept it cool on the outside. He couldn’t help but wonder what Daniel’s childhood had been like. It must’ve been hell to churn out a man like that. 

Max had to spend the afternoon cooking in Jen’s - or Mother Johanna, whatever the fuck she was - kitchen, and it felt unnecessary and hellish. Baking? In what was pretty much a fucked-up apocalypse preparation camp? But If Max didn’t go, which he’d already tried not to, Daniel would probably slit his throat right there. So Max trudged over to the camp’s poor excuse for a kitchen, making sure to avoid all of the black puddles he encountered along the way. 

Jen had a large, forced smile on her face as Max entered the kitchen. There were a few other campers there of various ages, but Max still didn’t know them by name. “How nice of you to join us, Max. Here, pair up with Salem. We’re making apple muffins.” Jen hissed the order through her tightly clenched teeth, pointing to a short brown-haired boy that looked like he couldn’t’ve been more than eleven years old. 

“Hey,” Max said, barely looking at the boy. 

“Hey,” Salem said back.

They worked the rest of the session in silence, Jen’s voice guiding them through the simple steps of making apple muffins. The apples they used looked round and crisp and beautiful, with pink skins and perfectly white mesocarp. They smelled strongly of, well - apple, but better. Like apple candy. But Jen warned all of the campers not to think about even nibbling one that was uncooked, and that was warning enough for Max. It probably had some sort of new, demented poison inside. 

It went off without a hitch, and by the end, the kids eating their fully baked muffins seemed to be doing fine. At least, none were dead on the floor,  _ yet _ . But when Salem took his and Max’s muffins out of the bake(?)er oven (it was some sort of weird contraption that wasn’t quite an oven and wasn’t quite an easy-bake. Something in between), though, they were completely liquid inside. 

“Oh, no no no, don’t eat those.” Jen said, taking the tray from them and putting it on an obscure cooling rack in the corner. She took a couple of her own perfect muffins and brought them to the boys, each one with a napkin. “Here, take these instead.” 

Max immediately dropped it and crushed it under his sneaker. It smooshed through the gaps between the planks that made up the bottom of the platform tent. Jen didn’t seem to care, though, and was already walking away. 

Salem opened his mouth to take a bite of the muffin, and Max watched warily before deciding to step in. “I wouldn’t do that.” He said, pushing the muffin out of Salem’s hands. It fell to the ground. 

“Uh- I was going to eat that,” Salem looked at his sad muffin, lying on the dirty planks. 

“Trust me, I just did you a favor.” Max crossed his arms. “What kind of shit name is Salem, anyway? Who  _ named  _ you?” 

Salem looked irritated. 

“What the fuck. I can’t believe you’re--” 

From across the room, Jen watched everyone eat their muffins happily. 

_ Good _ , she thought. _ A success _ . Baking with apples from the tree was always risky, and they had experienced a couple of deaths before, but either way, the consumer benefitted. A good muffin or ascension. Jen glanced at the tray of unbaked muffins, which were now cooled and not at all suspicious from the outside. She’d given those specific apples to Max’s group on purpose, but he was smarter than that. She should have known, if the boy was able to ruin Daniel’s plans, repeatedly, at just ten years old. 

Jen put on her fake cheery voice and clasped her hands together. “Alright, kids! That’s it for today. There’ll be a short break; stay in your tents! And then dinner at six. Don’t miss it!” She trilled, patting each child’s shoulder as they walked out of the tent. 

Once everyone was gone, Jen got to work. 

She put on gloves - the blue latex kind that Daniel wore - and took one of the unbaked muffins from the tray. Sticking a knife into the muffin to double-check that the inside was still unbaked, Jen placed it on a metal tray, functioning as a plate. The muffin was already starting to collapse, so she worked quickly, leaving the tent, tray in hand. She walked behind the big mess hall tent and to Daniel’s obscure tent on the edge of the camp. 

“Dan?” She said quietly. 

“Come in.” Daniel replied, and Jen could hear his words thick with fluid, presumably blood. She entered the tent. 

Daniel hadn’t cleared the shattered mirror from the ground, and had been spitting blood and teeth from his mouth straight onto the top of his dresser. The whole tent was a mess, but Jen took it all in calmly, handing Daniel the tray. 

“We made apple muffins. They turned out nicely.” 

Daniel regarded it suspiciously. “You didn’t use apples from that tree, right?” 

“Of course not,” Jen replied, looking insulted. “I’m not stupid.”   
“Well, either way…” Daniel spat out another tooth on the top of his dresser, blood smeared across his lips. He took the tray from Jen. 

“I’ll leave you to it, then.” She said. Then she walked out. 

The moment Daniel bit into the muffin, he realized what was wrong. He wanted to applaud Jen for being so clever. Daniel chewed the uncooked muffin slowly, raw dough and chunks of the fateful apple mingling with his blood and the open wounds in his mouth. Then, he spit everything out onto the floor. 

He didn’t pull out any more teeth, despite the fact that he still had too many out of place and pushing into his gums at uncomfortable angles. Instead, Daniel took something from the top drawer of his dresser and injected it into his arm. A grin split his lips, and he just couldn’t help it - Jen really was a genius, wasn’t she? Sometimes he forgot why he partnered with such a bitch. Then, Daniel was reminded that she was the very reason that he still existed, whether a good thing or bad thing. 

She’d helped him find his purpose. Now, she was going to help him end it in the most brilliant, terrifying way possible. 

Daniel tapped the end of the needle gently, making sure the whole of its contents was in his arm, and removed it. He changed his gloves, wiped his mouth, and drew crudely on one of his surgical masks before putting it on. 

He was going to have to ascend the whole camp within a week, and that was a lot of work for one man. Wait, no - maybe, he’d be able to hide it, use it to better advantage of the camp. He’d make a loyal group of followers out of the children yet. 

Daniel rarely felt himself get so excited about things, but he was beside himself over this. If you asked, he would tell you that he only killed people to help them reach the next level, continue their spiritual journeys on another plane. But in complete truth, he just liked killing things. There were 7 billion lives on the planet, increasing every moment, and that would only continue to grow in every life and universe. What difference did a few kids make? It fascinated him, the way he could have someone laughing and present and here, and then,  _ boom _ , gone. 

He used to be able to keep it in check, a sort of controlled chaos. The last few months had changed Daniel significantly, though - he barely slept, his minimal patience wearing thinner and thinner, ready to take a bullet to his own head and everyone else’s. 

Daniel could already feel the flesh on the top of his mouth beginning to thicken and swell. Pulling his surgical mask up so that it hooked around his ears, he stood, straightening his posture and trying to hide all hints of feelings other than apathy. It was time to go take care of those idiot children who had run out into the rain, anyway. 

He thought briefly about the dark-haired kid who had been so disrespectful and intruding, several times within the last 24 hours. What was it - Max? That was the child that David had so wanted to adopt years ago. Daniel let himself smile bitterly underneath his mask. God, cutting off anything that reminded him of David would be a good thing. Hopefully, he’d be able to give the kid a good scare before bashing his skull in or giving him a knife to the heart. Ah, and he’d have to remember to thank Jen when he found the time.

Daniel left his tent with what could be called a spring in his step. 

 

It was going to be a good week. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what tf is Daniel so happy about
> 
> David and Daniel's relationship backstory is coming to a slow close - hopefully within the next couple chapters I'll be shifting to Max and the gang's life before fallout! Here's a long chapter for you guys because hONESTLY the last few have been rushed and thin and sucked ass so have some more...substance...or something. The reason the last few haven't been as good is because I got off-track with my outline of the story, which means I had to make a lot of space-filling shit up that looked like it was meant to be there, but after an hour of searching my room this morning I fOUnD the outline again and remembered I'm still behind with the plotline and uhhhhh
> 
> Whatever fuck the plot I'll keep all the scene but this story's gonna be a lot longer than planned ig


	8. interlude ii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As domestic as it gets around here. 
> 
> okAY BUT LEMME JUST TELL YOU @naar DID SOME amaZINg FANART FOR THIS FIC SO,, CHECK IT OUT 100%?? THey'rE incredible and I haven't stopped freaking out about this yet js // https://twitter.com/hamsterstripper/status/970597122767769600
> 
> Oof ok now that I'm done screaming - the song for this chapter is the song that Daniel plays for David - except he only plays the last half, starting just before 3:40 in the video. So uh,,, yeah,,, hope y'all like this, sorry it took so long?? It was slow to write because I didn't want to rush it too much, and I cut out a huge chunk of the middle already because it felt unnecessary and boring. Anyway! Enjoy!

 

_ 4 years earlier _

_ Before the Fall _

_ Late July _

 

Daniel needed to bleach his hair. 

His hair was freshly washed, but it had gotten so long that it was nearly impossible to push the top section back properly; it fell to the side of his face, and at least an inch or it gave way to darker, unattractive roots. David said that he liked it that way, long and soft and natural, but Daniel disagreed. He felt like a mess, and didn’t like to look in mirrors very much. Even though he didn’t grow facial hair, Daniel still felt like he needed to shave. 

Though, Daniel thought, he did feel better when David kissed his face and told him how perfect he was, how flawless. He would vacillate between desperately hoping that David wasn’t tired of him and wanting to leave, to just run away. But every time that David wrapped his arms about him, every time David  _ worshiped _ him - Daniel loved the adoration like a drug. He got off on it. Maybe that’s why he stayed for so long. 

So Daniel kept his hair natural, falling in his face and ash blonde and dark at the roots, simply for David’s pleasure. It caught the light nicely, anyway, and framed Daniel’s face better than his short hair did. 

It was a saturday morning, and David was going out to swim with some of the campers who were interested. He had on navy blue swim trunks decorated with alabaster anchors, a very nice tone against David’s tan skin. Daniel sat on his bed, reading a worn copy of  _ Hamlet _ and watching David hurry around the counselor’s cabin, grabbing different things for the children. 

“Hey, Daniel, how’d you like to come swim with us?” David asked hopefully, slipping on some cheap flip flops instead of his usual heavy boots. “I could really use another hand! Or, set of hands. However you say it.”   
“No, thank you.” Daniel replied gently, shifting his attention back to the _Hamlet_ cradled in his arms. David frowned, then smiled again. “Even if I did, I don’t like to swim.”

“Well, offer still stands! You can just come out and sit on the dock, too.” He said, grabbing a pail full of swim toys next to the door and pushing it open with an elbow. “No pressure, though! I’ll be back in an hour, hopefully. Maybe a lil longer, yeah?”

“Of course.” 

David left, and the door swung shut behind him. Daniel could hear the clattering of pool toys and the  _ shtik-shik _ of David’s flip flops as he lumbered (no doubt, clumsily) down the path that lead to the lake. Once he was out of earshot, Daniel turned back to his book. He  _ would _ go down to the water, but he didn’t have any swimming trunks, and it would be cold and heavy and generally unpleasant to stand there in wet clothes. But then again, David’s shirtless, freckled body was a  _ very _ nice sight. A pleasing human form, indeed. 

There was no harm in just sitting out on the dock, right?

Daniel finished the scene he was reading, carefully bookmarked his page, and set it on the dresser. He wanted a moment to appreciate David before his cleanly planned out murder that was going to happen at sundown. David, with those playful eyes, tan in all the right places, and pretty thighs that Daniel just wanted to kiss all over. Right before pushing a knife through David’s chest, of course. 

Those were Daniel’s kind of fantasies. Kisses and blood and being a god. 

He put on a close-fitting tee shirt and a pair of white jeans to replace his pajamas, wearing his light brown sandals and strolling calmly down the same path that David had. It was a warm summer morning, but not wildly hot. Birds chattered away in the trees 

Even before Daniel made it within the vicinity of the beach, he could hear the children splashing around in the water, laughing. Just the sound - it reminded him, vaguely, of a time when he’d been bursting with that sort of empathy. Blowing a friend’s bubbles into the wind under a playset, kicking wood chips into the wind with his new velcro sneakers, glutting himself on pink frosted animal crackers. Days when he’d wandered the earth without purpose and spent his time trying to become ‘normal.’ 

The thought sent a shudder down his spine. Xenu, he hated working with children. 

Hesitant, Daniel moved from the cover of the trees and headed out onto the lakeshore. The look on David’s face when he spotted Daniel - it really was like he was looking into the eyes of God himself, the thousand-watt smile lighting up his face brilliantly pure. 

“Danny! Come play with us!” He shouted, helping one of the younger campers step up onto the dock. She tottered toward the edge, pushed her floaties up, and jumped off, splashing three other campers in the process and starting a water fight. Daniel stood by and watched it unravel with a detached expression until David beckoned to him again. “C’mon, Daniel!” 

Daniel smiled gently, finally walking over toward the dock. Where dirt met sand he pushed off his sandals and let himself sink into the warm sand - a guilty pleasure, maybe, but he rolled up his jeans all the same. 

“Alright, kids, you can splash all you want, but try and stay away from Daniel, okay? He doesn’t want to get wet.” David said gently, and the campers barely nodded before going back to their full-on water war. Daniel approached them on the dock, sitting down as far as possible from the action and letting his left leg dangle down into the cool water. 

It felt so nice. Cool and refreshing against the dry air. 

“I’m so glad you’re joining us.” David moved over toward Daniel and pushed himself up onto the dock several feet away. “It’s a perfect day to be out by the lake.” 

“It  _ is _ a nice day.” Daniel agreed softly. “You should go watch them. But I’ll be here.” He nodded toward the group of rambunctious children on the other end of the dock. David made a happy little sound of affirmation and stood up, the dock creaking slightly as he bounded over to reach the campers and play with them. 

Again, Daniel felt disconnected. Every day he was surrounded by these symbols of innocence, virginity, childhood. People living the lives he wasn’t meant for. It’s not that he hadn’t wanted to be like other people at first - after he’d left the Scientologist YCEP, he just  _ wasn’t _ like them. He couldn’t remember why he’d ever want to blow bubbles, or why kicking up wood chips would be appealing. He still felt things, but it was all distant and cold. Pity. Wrath. Sadness. 

David made Daniel feel different things. It was uncomfortable. Daniel didn’t like any of it, but he was strangely drawn to the feelings, so unfamiliar and long-gone. It was going to be all over that night, anyway - Jen had already snagged Daniel a knife from the kitchen, small and serrated. Not the most practical, but deadly nonetheless. The plan was similar in nature. Daniel would get David to take a walk with him, and it would be over.

It wasn’t as simple as Daniel would’ve liked it to be, though; David wasn’t as stupid as people often thought he was, and Daniel knew that David didn’t trust him any further than he could throw. After all, Daniel could read people like the back of his hand, and David was not to be underestimated, no matter how smiley or bubbly he was.

A giant spray of water cut over the dock and drenched Daniel, to which he immediately withdrew from his thoughts and yelped, drawing both legs back up onto the dock. 

“Oh gosh! Daniel - I’m so sorry-” in a second, David was standing in front of Daniel, half-panicking and not wanting to mess things up. After a brief moment, Daniel recovered.

“Oh...it’s okay.” He said in a bland tone. The kids were already back to playing, apparently uninterested in Daniel’s pissed state. His clothes were clinging to his skin, water-logged and heavy. 

“Here, let me get you a towel. You can get back to the cabin right away…” David ran onto the shore and grabbed Daniel a towel, wrapping it around his boyfriend’s shoulders with an apologetic smile. “I shouldn’t have asked-”

“-no, no, it’s okay. Really.” Daniel comforted David softly. “I’ll be fine, It's a nice day anyway…” He pull the towel more tightly around his shoulders, the occasional cool breeze suddenly much chillier now that he was completely wet. “I’ll just go back to the cabin, then. You’ve got quite a handful there.” 

It was as if David was noticing the children for the first time. He always had that weird look of understated surprise on his face, like he always had too much to do and too many things on his mind to possibly keep track of them all. “Right. Okay. I’m so sorry, again.” 

“Don’t worry about it.” Daniel placed a hand on David’s upper arm, relaxed. David got terrible anxiety attacks and meltdowns over little things - Daniel knew better than to lash out at him over something so small, no matter how inconvenient it happened to be. Keeping him relaxed and happy was...ideal. “You know, how about I go swimming with you? I’m already wet now, it wouldn’t be that bad to stand in the water for a bit.” 

David’s whole face lifted. “You mean it?” He sounded thrilled.

“Yes, I do. I don’t have any swim trunks, so may I borrow a pair of yours?” Daniel kept his gaze level, trying not to glance anywhere uncomfortable and make things awkward. 

“Absolutely! Everything’s in the top drawer of my dresser,” David said, looking back at the children. They’d quieted down considerably and seemed to be playing a lighthearted game of Marco Polo. 

“Thank you. I’ll be back soon.” Daniel replied. As he crossed the beach a second time, the sand got stuck to his feet and ankles, which irritated Daniel further; he ignored it, walking all the way back to the cabin covered in water and sand. Yeah, he didn’t go swimming often. But that was because his chest was still covered in pale scars that would never quite fade completely, even more noticeable when he tanned. Other people stared, and Daniel had a tendency to, well - _ take care _ of people who let their eyes linger too long. Some days, he didn’t trust himself not to blow cover when faced with mild frustrations. 

Daniel felt darker, for some reason. He had these wild changes in personality, changes in mood. Again...an inconvenience, at best. 

Daniel changed into David’s swim trunks, (for some reason, David’s clothing fit him very well, though he didn’t fill it out the same way) something a pale seafoam color. But he caught his own reflection in the mirror, and it felt bothersome. He felt a sudden urge to shatter it but restrained himself, his own unnatural eyes staring back at him. 

He smashed the mirror against David’s dresser. 

It splintered into several large chunks. Daniel took the bigger pieces into his fist and crushed them until they gave in, and he was left with small shards and slightly bloody hands. He wiped them on the swim trunks that he was wearing absentmindedly. 

He didn’t go back to the beach. Instead, he went to the mess hall and stood outside the kitchen until Gwen left to go get something  - Daniel wasn’t allowed in the kitchen, but he went in anyway - and found Jen, who was helping prepare lunch. She didn’t look surprised; she never did. They didn’t talk to each other, but Daniel went through drawers until he found one with a lock on it, and swore on Xenu’s name. 

“You could have told me they were locked up.” Daniel said quietly, regaining his composure. Jen just shrugged. 

“Yeah, whatever, Dan.” She replied without looking up. “You’ve got blood on his pants.” 

Daniel looked at his scabbing hands and then the swimming trunks he was wearing, with two big swipes of dark reddish purple on each side. “You’re right.” He sat up on the counter that lead to the cafeteria portion of the mess hall and pushed himself over it so that it wouldn’t be suspicious when Gwen came back. “I’ll meet you tonight, where we planned. Wait for me.” He said. Jen shrugged again, but it was a yes. 

Gwen opened the door and entered the kitchen with several large jars of peanut butter in her arms. “Oh. Hey, Daniel. Going swimming?” She asked, setting the peanut butter down on the counter next to Jen. 

“Sure am - David is too! It’s a gorgeous day out, you ladies should join us.” Like night and day, Daniel was smiling flirtily, winking at Gwen. Not even a trace of the disturbed, cold, unfeeling man that had been there only seconds ago. 

“Oh, shut up. You _know_ we have to finish up making lunch.” Gwen groaned, but broke into a smile anyway. “Maybe afterward, though. What do you think about that, Jen?”   
Jen looked unenthusiastic, but more sad and reserved than just her usual apathy. It was clear that Gwen cared about her a lot - she poked Jen a couple of times, evidently trying to get her to chin up. “That sounds okay,” Jen said, her voice fragile and quiet.

“Sounds good! And be careful with the winks, Daniel, David’ll think you’re cheating on him, and you know how he gets.” Gwen said, mirth in her voice. “Well, we’ll finish this up and get out there. Seeya, Daniel.” She pried open a tub of creamy peanut butter, got some out with a spoon, and handed it to Jen, who immediately smiled and put it into her mouth with a blissful expression. 

Daniel could easily tell it was fake. Jen never acted like that. 

“Seeya out there, Gwenny.” He said cheerfully, smiling and heading out of the mess hall. 

He felt a little better, reassured by how much Gwen trusted them and Jen’s subtle presence. Only one more day of being unclean in that hell. By the time he made it back to the beach, the majority of the campers were up on the beach, making sandcastles and digging holes. David was sitting next to that one young girl he’d helped earlier, adding twigs to a lopsided pile of sand like it was the white house. 

Daniel caught David’s eye and smiled. 

If he had his eyes, he wouldn’t look at the scars. 

 

That evening, David let Daniel put his arms around him, and Daniel kissed David’s forehead, and they laughed and talked. David hadn’t worried about the mirror - Daniel told him that he’d just dropped it and panicked after trying to pick it up and cutting his palm open - and they were both back to their lovely state of in-between. 

“You’re gorgeous,” Daniel whispered. David giggled into Daniel’s shirt, tugging gently. 

“So are you, though.” 

“I suppose.” 

They laid in silence, tangled up in each other’s warm messy auras. 

“Hey.” Daniel tilted David’s chin up. “Would you like me to play a song for you?” 

“I would love that,” David replied softly. 

Daniel’s violin had been sitting dusty and unused in a closet for a year, something David had kept after last summer because he thought that it would be an asset to some sort of future music camp. David had given it back when Daniel came to work at the camp, but so far he hadn’t heard Daniel play or even pick it up - it’d just kinda disappeared, with no further conversation. 

Daniel slowly got up, leaving David’s warmth. “Come with me, love,” he said. David took his hand and sat up on the bed. 

“Where are we going?” 

“Shh - It’s a surprise.” 

Daniel held on to David’s hand and pulled him up. Outside, the day was almost spent; the sun was setting, and cicadas chirped loudly from the trees. Leading David through the woods, Daniel’s eyes dilated as he looked around. There was a spot, where trees gave way to a different shore of the lake - ah! Daniel found it, moving through the brush until they reached a secluded section of the beach. David sat down in the sand as Daniel poked around in the tall grasses and around trees, looking for something. 

Hidden in the base of a tree was Daniel’s violin case.

He picked up the case, running his fingers over the slim silver finishing. He flipped the latch and opened it. David came and sat down beside Daniel, cross-legged and quiet. 

The violin was in very good shape - dusty and in need of a polish, maybe, but hopefully good enough to play. Daniel took the instrument out and plucked at the strings, adjusting the tuning knobs and humming a note every so often until they all seemed to be working together in the right tones. Then, Daniel picked up a small square of what looked like wax and the violin bow, tightening it appropriately and running the waxy square through the hair over and over again. David watched him prepare in awe, happy just to be sitting next to someone doing what they loved. 

Daniel stopped preparing the violin and drew it up to his shoulder tentatively, taking a deep breath. The bow slipped and squealed against the strings, hacking out one fragile note, then another. Once Daniel seemed to have found a rhythm back, he paused and glanced at David, who was staring at him with innocence and excitement.

“Alright. Here, I’m going to try to play a song...I’m out of practice. But I’ve been thinking...ah, of this song...It was my favorite as a teenager. Needlessly morose, maybe, but it reminds me of you.” Daniel murmured, fixing his posture and lifting his bow as if in silent wait for some sort of cue. 

Then, he began to play. 

First, he simply plucked at the strings for a few measures, then he launched into a song. It wasn’t particularly sad - like a type of informal requiem, full of memories and something else. Something new and different. Not quite quiet but not demanding attention. Soft, but with plenty of edges, too. 

David couldn’t help his smile. It was just like Daniel himself. And here he was, thinking that the only tune Daniel’d be able to hack out would sound like  _ The Devil Went Down to Georgia _ . Not that David would be any less impressed. It was just surprising, how there was a sound and a setting that embodied the man in front of him perfectly. 

The sun was down over the horizon, the last streaks of orange and purple sinking into the ground and giving way to a clear navy sky dotted with stars. It was breathtaking, experiencing the sky and the music and the presence of someone so perfect. 

When Daniel finished, he had his eyes closed and his mouth drawn. 

“Daniel, that was brilliant!” David said quietly, his whole face and body drawn up in pure thrill. Daniel’s serious face broke into a lopsided smile, and he pushed his hair out of his eyes as he relaxed. “You’re so versatile, even out of practice. And it’s beautiful out here, with the sun down!” 

“Thank you. I appreciate your compliments greatly,” Daniel replied. His voice was soft and fragile. He looked at David, so sweet and happy, and felt a sudden urge to just kiss his mouth - but I was never Daniel’s to take. “Can I kiss you?” He asked gently. 

“Of course, Danny, you don’t have to ask.” David pushed his chin out and Daniel closed that distance. It was a soft kiss, not particularly rushed or deep or needy. Just quiet and shallow and sweet. 

He had the knife in his hand that propped himself up, just behind David. Daniel tried to think about the best spot to push the knife up into David’s ribcage from behind, but his mouth was killing everything that Daniel was trying to think, which was...less than fortunate. He pressed the pad of his thumb into the serrated edge of the knife. The pain brought him back momentarily, but it was in that moment that Daniel realized something very, very bad. 

He didn’t  _ want _ to kill David. 

Daniel didn’t know what it was - David wasn’t pure of heart, and he wasn’t particularly clean or proper or anything that Daniel thought he approved of or liked. 

He pushed the knife back into the sand. 

Jen was going to wring his neck, but they’d try again tomorrow with a different plan. 

He'd blame it on the knife. 


	9. Choke//

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this took so long? finals and stuff make it hard so i had to cut this chapter down to a reasonable size

 

This time, when David woke up, Jasper was still fast asleep. David rubbed exhaustion from his eyes and turned so that he could see the rest of the room; it was mid-morning, most likely, based on the tone of light filtering into the room. He laid there and let himself be numb, trying not to think of... _anything_. Everything felt bitter and harsh, and being numb was easy.

After a long 15 minutes, David finally mustered up enough strength to sit up. He got to his feet quietly and tried his best not to wake Jasper as he moved through the room.

This was David’s _house_. It may have been shabby and dusty and a complete mess, but just six months ago it had been his pride and joy. David spent hours and hours working on that house, making repairs, adding a nice new picket fence around the front and putting in new porches, tending to the garden. He’d made memories in that house, in that neighborhood, in that town.

It was his.

David loosely peered into the rooms, all in various states of disrepair, then made his way down into the living room. He avoided the kitchen and the boarded-up doors that lead out to the back porch, where- David swallowed nervously. He avoided the area, altogether.

In the living room, David took some of the photos of Annabeth and Jonah out of their frames and tucked them into his pockets.

As soon as Jasper woke up, David would go out and start to ask around about them. They’d only left the bunker a few hours apart. How far could they be? Surely someone must’ve seen where they went. If that didn’t work out, he’d try to find out about Gwen, or Max’s foster family. And - David’s heart skipped a beat - he’d ask about that man he’d seen at the Missionary camp. He’d looked _so much_ like Daniel. Daniel, but...stronger. That look that he’d given David; it was so, so cold.

It was likely, though, that it had been David’s imagination. David’s desperation to be needed and wanted like Daniel had needed him. If not out of love, then out of some sort of bitter, darker purpose. David didn’t care.

God, he just wanted to be cared about. And he was just so _bored._

David laid down on the couch. His head hurt, badly, and he hadn’t even been outside the bunker for a full 24 hours. There were moments that he forgot; he forgot that this was a _wasteland,_ that everything he’d ever known and loved was gone. Or at least destroyed, to an extent.

So, he laid there. Barely breathing.

Wishing, not for the first time, that he wasn’t.

Jasper finally came downstairs, David was half-asleep again. “Davey...are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Jasp - just tired, I guess one night of sleep just didn’t do it for me.” David cracked open an eye and sat up. “But today, I was thinking that maybe we could go out and ask around about others? Friends? My family?”

“Oh…” Jasper sounded hesitant. “Okay. I mean, I’m not sure…”

David waited.

“I’m not sure that we should go outside. We can be safe here, David, but outside? People will know that we’ve got a safe place and what if they kill us-”

The people outside hadn’t seemed particularly aggressive, but David could understand Jasper’s fear. Especially having to listen to...Infecteds...banging on the door every single night. But other than that, from what David had seen, everyone just seemed tired. There weren’t many people out in the first place. “It’s okay. I’ll protect you, Jasp, I got this!” David stood up and smiled at Jasper, who still looked doubtful.

“Okay,” He replied softly. “Okay, I’ll, uh...I’ll go. Being alone is so much worse than being with you.”

“Good. I’m glad,” David said.

They prepared appropriately. David changed his clothing with things left over from months ago, but left his Camp Campbell shirt on. He grabbed a small American flag that was in the top drawer of his dresser to tie around his neck like a bandana, put on a belt, and went through the contents of his backpack - which was mostly junk, so David supplemented it with useful things that were around the house. This included ammunition from the basement, which just _felt_ useful after the previous night. Jasper ate an apple and followed David around. They made quiet conversation, discussing what they both knew and trying to piece together a good plan of action.

“There’s a bar, or something, at the edge of the neighborhood, I saw it while I was walking in. Or we could check the old high school - I heard some people were staying there.” David offered. Jasper nodded as he opened a can of peaches, scooping some out with his fingers and handing it to David. He put several more cans of peaches in the backpack.

“Sure.”

Truth be told, they were both equally uneducated on how to handle a nuclear fallout; neither had been outside for very long, and both were equally scared of what they might find under the surface. So, they ate their canned peaches, wiped their hands on dirty clothes, and headed out into town for the first time in a long, long while. They lingered down the cracked street. Every so often a patched-up car would come blazing past them, unrestricted by laws and common sense. Houses were rusting or peeling or generally in a state of disrepair, the majority of them boarded up to some extent, if not for repair, for personal safety.

Only a few people walked the streets. Some garages had been converted into makeshift businesses of sorts; David took everything in curiously, making sure that Jasper stayed close as they shuffled down the sidewalk.

“I wonder how you pay for things?” Jasper asked, absent minded. David shrugged and held a short pause.

“Uh...I’m not sure, I haven’t thought about it. Maybe trading, or maybe normal money? Gosh, you’re right…”

They continued walking until they came to a particular garage that seemed to have a fair amount of activity. There were tables set up down the driveway and in the front yard, with cups and mugs of different sizes being passed around among groups of primarily men. The people stood around and talked, a few playing cards or getting a chance at a shabby pool table that seemed to be the crown jewel of the whole operation. Some held guns, and others sported dogs. It was all very masculine and intimidating, though David _did_ recognise some of the men from before the fallout.

Jasper placed a hand on David’s arm shyly, lingering behind.

“What’s wrong, Jasp?”

“There’s a lot of people there.” He replied.

“Come on, we’ll be fine. I’ve got a gun, remember?” David didn’t want to even _think_ about shooting anyone else, ever, _ever_ again - but if it was really necessary...there’d be no harm in self defense. It was better than Jasper, or himself, getting killed. And just having it made David feel a little more in control of the situation at hand.

When he stepped forward, Jasper followed, and everything was alright. David drew himself up and tried to look like someone competent and capable, someone hardened by months of survival in a wasteland. Surely someone there would know about his family, or at least someone else that he knew.

There was a man at the mouth of the garage that looked like he might be in charge, so David marched right up to him and took a death breath.

“Excuse me-”  
“What do you want?”

Trying not to appear taken aback, David shook his head and scowled. “I’m passing through. Do you know where I can get any antiseptic or medical supplies?”

It wasn’t the right question, but it was a start. Something casual.

“Nowhere in particular. If you don’t know how it works here, find someone else to give you a tour.” The man looked like he couldn’t give less of a fuck, and David started to lose his composure. Just barely.

“Look. Where am I _now_? I just want to get some sort of idea, okay?” He smiled and tried to make the man understand.

“This is a bar. We have drinks, pool, and cards.”

Cards. That was something David could do - maybe he’d be able to talk to some people that way. “Cards? Who can play?”

“Anyone, just find someone with a deck and start a match. And, if you can beat our ace in a game of poker, she’ll give you a truckful of canned peaches.” the man said. “To play, though, you have to bring a girlie magazine or something like that. She’ll sometimes play without, though.”

“Who’s your...ace?”

David’s eyes followed the man’s hand as he pointed to the table nearest to the garage, a handful of people lingering around it. In the center was a girl - no, a woman, with a medical style-eyepatch and bandana covering the majority of her face, sitting cross-legged on one end of the table. She wore a cropped leather jacket and a sweatshirt underneath, cargo pants, and converse on her feet. David immediately recognised her as Gwen, but he didn’t trust his eyes after yesterday.

“I can just go up and play a game of cards with her?” He asked, and the man nodded. So David took Jasper’s hand firmly and marched over to the table, head up, catching the woman’s attention. Her visible eye flickered with recognition, lifting from the several decks of cards on the table and to David’s own eyes.

“David?” She didn’t sound confused, just mildly surprised. “What are you doing here?”

The other people who’d been watching whatever was going on before now started to lose interest and slunk back, leaving David, Jasper, and Gwen to stare awkwardly at each other.

“Er- Gwen. How’ve you - what happened to your eye?” David said shyly.

“Nothing. It’s to look intimidating so that people don’t fuck with me.” Gwen replied in that matter-of-fact manner that was so typical to her. “Who’s your friend?” She jutted her chin out to motion loosely toward Jasper.

“Oh, yeah! This is Jasper. He’s a childhood friend of mine.”

“Hi,” Jasper waved, still a step behind David. “I’ve seen you on Davey’s mantle.”

Gwen laughed, muffled by her bandana and not taking Jasper’s statement as odd in the slightest. “I bet. We were counselors together at this weird-ass summer camp.” That made Jasper smile, and David was glad to see that they were getting along.

“Yeah. Yeah, me and Davey went there, a while ago.”

“Oh, really? Well, it’s good to meet you, Jasper.” Gwen picked up a deck of cards and shuffled it in her hands. “Wanna play a game of cards with me? You can win a truckload of peaches.”

“What is it with the canned peaches?” David asked. Now, Gwen looked more surprised.

“There’s a warehouse in town that was full of them. People use them for everything. David - where have you _been_ for the last 6 months? I walked _all_ the way here from my house up north in hopes of finding you, or Annabeth, or anyone, but most people were gone. They just up and disappeared, it was a ghost town. I almost went back home.”

“Oh, geez! I’m sorry, Gwen.” David ran a hand through his limp, oily hair. “There was a bunker - everyone in the town went underground. At least” - he glanced at Jasper - “most of us got there in time. I’ve been underground for months.”

“Jesus.” Gwen shook her head and shuffled the deck in her hands again. “Well, at least you’re okay. Why are you...out? Now?”

“I’m looking for Annabeth, actually.” David admitted. “The bunker was running out of resources, so they started kicking people out. They have no way of knowing if it’s safe to come out yet, since there’s no contact to the outside world. It was just, ah. A bad situation, I guess. But I’m good now! I found Jasper, and now you, and Annabeth can’t be far off!”

“If you say so, David. But I’m worried. You’re naive and gullible 29-year-old man with suicidal tendencies and going to get yourself killed out here.”

“Don’t be silly. I’m a good survivalist.” David reached out to touch Gwen’s hair affectionately, but Gwen moved out of the way. She pulled down her bandana so that it rested around her neck, giving the boys a lopsided, fed up smile.

“Yeah, okay. I’ll give you that.” Gwen moved off of the table. “I missed you, David.”

“Awe, I missed you too, Gwen.” David’s smile was so buoyant, you could’ve sworn he’d never been sad in his life. “I hear you play a mean poker game. Let’s play.”

Motioning to a couple of chairs and pouring gambling chips from a bag onto the table, Gwen smiled at them. “Alright - I have to warn you, though, I’m pretty damn good.”

“Well, may the best man win?”

“May the best _woman_ win.”

They sat themselves around the table, Jasper observing David and Gwen’s poker match with an intense gaze. A couple of people stopped by to watch, but most wandered after a few minutes; the game was fairly short. Gwen lived up to her name, playing _very_ well and beating David soundly.

“Goshdarnit, Gwen! I don’t understand-” David stumbled over his own words in frustration. Gwen raked in another handful of chips, collecting all of the cards and putting the chips back into her sweatshirt pocket.

“You don’t mess with the queen, David. It’s just how it is,” Gwen’s tone was confident, and she smiled at the boys genuinely. “Pecking order.”  
“Will you teach me how to play, Gwen?” Jasper asked spiritedly, his pale face red with excitement. He turned to David. “She should come back with us.”

“Sure,” Gwen replied. All three of them stood up. It was late morning by then, and David realized how much time he’d wasted by letting himself get sidetracked.

“Actually...Jasp...I’m not sure that’s a great idea…” David cut in, hesitant. “We should really keep asking around about Annabeth and Jonah.”

“Oh, don’t sweat it, David, why don't I hang with Jasper and teach him how to play, and you can go off and look for Anna?” Smiling reassuringly, Gwen looked at Jasper, who nodded eagerly and took a step toward her. David’s expression was still dubious. “Aw, come on. We can handle ourselves.”

Jasper gave David a pleading look, and finally, he relented.

“Alright, alright. But you guys go back to the house, okay? Gwen, is that okay with you? Maybe you can stay with us, if Jasper’s okay with it.”

Gwen glanced quickly at the man in charge, dumped the gambling chips from her pockets onto the table, and cupped her hands around her mouth. “Hey, Fred!” She shouted, ripping her eyepatch off. “I quit!” Then, she turned back to the boys and gave them a thumbs up. “Yep. All free today. And tomorrow. And the next day. It’s the apocalypse.”

“Oh, wow, okay. Okay...I’m going to go, but the house it just down the road a few blocks. You can show Gwen where it is, Jasp, here are the keys.” David dug into his pocket and gave Jasper a singular house key, an emergency one that had been left under a rock in the garden. “Uh, stay safe! I’ll be back at the house by sunset, I guess. We should have a code so that you know it’s me and not an imposter?”

“Yes! Yes, knock on the door and scream canned peaches as loudly as you can.” Jasper said. “Okay, Davey. Go look for your family.”

“Thanks. Gwen, do you have any suggestions on where they might be? Where people would stay around here if they’re new?” David asked hopefully, itching to get his hands on a lead that would take him right back into his old life. If that was even possible. Gwen thought about this for a moment, folding her arms.

“Errr...yeah. The only high school has been made into sort of a communal living space. I used to work there trying to treat injured people, but I can’t seem to keep a job.” Gwen said. “Anyway, the living conditions there aren’t great, and there are an awful lot of Infecteds - do you know what those are? Regardless! Uhh, yeah, if they’re staying anywhere in town tonight, it’s probably a good place to start.”

David grinned radiantly at her. “Thank you! I’ll start there, and ask around. I appreciate that so much.”

“Yep. Watch out for heat flares, and, y’know, death.”

They parted ways, and David watched Gwen and Jasper meander down the sidewalk at a casual pace. He was happy that they’d found Gwen, but it gave him less time to find Annabeth; no matter, he was sure she still couldn’t be far. Anyway, the town was small, and the high school was a twenty minute walk. David took a sort of shortcut through the dead, barren woods, the only hint of green being weeds and mosses underneath his feet. Most of the forest floor floor was dirt and graying leaves. He could see the back wall of the school, it was so close-

A dog came bounding out from some hiding spot many yards away, barking loudly. David immediately began to back up, pulling his hands to his chest. It was a _big_ dog, with brown and black fur and very, very white teeth. It continued to sprint at full speed until David was practically running away from it. The dog quickly caught up and rammed into the spot just below the back of David’s knees, nearly knocking him backward.

“Heyyyy, hey. Whoa there, puppy. Whoa…sit.” David nervously tried to continue walking away, but the dog had resigned to sitting and barking at him. “Where’s your owner, huh?” he asked. David stopped trying to escape and took a cautious step toward the dog. He’d always had a soft spot for animals, even if they were big and matted like the german shepherd in front of him.

David gently put his hand in front of the dog’s face and let it smell him, then moved to push his hand through the dog’s dirty and patchy fur. It let him, still sitting obediently and enjoying the attention. He felt around its neck for a collar, but there was none. He could feel the dog’s stomach and ribs, obviously undernourished and starving. “Who’s your owner?” David asked softly, rubbing the dog’s fur. It attempted to lick his arm, covering David with filmy slobber. “Oh, what a _good_ boy. Or girl. Oh…”

He remembered himself, and stood up. “I’m sorry. I have to go. I have to find my family.” The dog tried to follow him, but David mustered up all of the man inside of him and commanded it to sit.

The dog sat.

It just stared at him.

“It was nice to meet you. You’re really very sweet. Maybe I’ll come back one day.”

David took a step. The dog stared.

“Oh, don’t stare at me. Not like that.” David’s heart felt like it was breaking in two. He wanted to help the dog so badly. It was so sad, so unhealthy, and if no one wanted to take care of it, there was a good chance that it would die…

“Fine. Fine, you can come with me. But only for a little bit, okay? Come.” David said faintly. The dog started to follow him immediately, catching up to David and licking his hands. “We’ve got to give you a name. How about sugar? You’re so sweet. Oh, dear, what will Gwen say about this?” He murmured, a nervous monologue halfway to himself.

He glanced at the school. It was still in sight. It was still midday.

He’d have plenty of time to find his family.

-x-

 

Darkness and the hill. Grass, and dandelions, and stars. Another late, late night.

“I grew up, uh...an only child in a small town about an hour from here. I still live there, and during the year, I run a daycare.” 

“I was...raised with four other children, after I left my home and started staying at a compound. though none of them were of my blood. I was different, I suppose.”

“How?”

“Our mother didn’t have room to see anyone as an imperfect being. She only saw monsters - or, just me. I wasn’t her child. I was some disturbed kid who didn’t feel anything. She kept a safe distance between me and her own children. They weren’t unkind...they just didn’t know what to do with me. I don’t feel like normal people. I don’t act.”

“Yes, you do. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen _you._ ”

“Now I do, perhaps. At the time, however, I always felt so cold...it’s hard to care about things when they all seem so small. You, them - all of this lasts just a second in the true extent of our individual eternities. Sometimes, I just find waking up hard, because I have to feel. I wait for death so that I can move onto something better and less painful. Something more powerful.”

“Maybe.”

“I’m sorry. Oh, Xe-God, I’m so sorry. Leaving the cult - it’s hard. I want to go back and help everyone see...what I see…it all makes sense in my head, but now everyone thinks I’m out of my mind.”

“No! No, it’s okay. I understand. I just want you to be happy. I think you’re brilliant. I’m just slow, and most of these things, they’re beyond my paradigm. I can’t even imagine what it must feel like to be that enlightened.”

“You are. You enlighten me, every day, to the joy of the moment.”

“Really?”

“I used to think that there was only one way to see it all. It came so naturally to me, but there was always something wrong. Even when they told me I was greater and far more awake than everyone in the community, I felt empty, every day. And then there’s Jen, who’s almost as empty as I am, and we leave the community, and try to get others to see it the same way, because it just feels so _empty_. I wanted everyone to be empty like me.”

“Gosh.”

“But then I met you, and you - you don’t care what happens in the next life or where you’ll be in 20 years or even what lunch will be tomorrow. You are much more full of this...enlightenment, this joy, than I can ever be, and you make me full. You give me the perfect balance.”

“I’m so glad, that makes me so happy. You make me happy. I believe in you.”  
“You believe in me. But when I was a child, they cast me out.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Daniel.”

“No, but who _are_ you? Who is it that they cast out?”

There was a pause.

“God.”

 

-x-

 

It was the first time that David saw Daniel shirtless.

His back was covered in scrawled, scarred markings and tattoos; if anything, an external reminder of his unhinged state. Strange numbers, patterns, scarification. Just being able to look at it was strangely intimate. Daniel was unreadable; he sat with his spine curved forward and practically splitting through the thin, cold skin of his back, slouching slightly so that David could study him. He traced fingers down the words and numbers and mess, knowing that he would _never_ understand what they meant to Daniel, or what they meant in general.

And it took a lifetime’s worth of courage, but David kissed them.

He pressed his lips to Daniel’s scars like they were wounds he could heal.

“You mean so much,” he whispered finally.

Daniel straightened out his back, leaning into David’s warm embrace.

He’d grown up with the sole purpose of sex being either procreation or a clinical skill. Daniel’s body wasn’t particularly appealing, and it’s not liked he’d ever been violated or abused in that way as a child. So, most of the time, everything he did was rather forced and joyless.

But when Daniel had sex with David, it was because he wanted to. Because he wanted to indulge himself in David’s pretty thighs and just kiss them. Because he wanted to trace the freckles on David’s skin and love him. All those imperfections melted away under his fingertips, and they became something transcendent.

And it was just so _easy_.

-x-

 

“What I teach, what I think about, is not Scientology.” Daniel said matter-of-factly, and David looked at him blankly. “Sure, I may take the basic principles, but Scientology is focused on finding solutions to your problems. What I have - what I share - is not a solution for you. It is my solution, given to others.”

“What does that mean?”

Daniel smiled the kind of smile that told David he’d never understand at all.

“It's just...we are all part of this greater, eternal, universe. We all have roles in that universe, and everyone can have different interpretations of what those are; but I _know_ what people’s roles are. I can look at someone, and I just know them, I know what they feel and how they hurt. It’s my solution, but whether you listen or not is up to you.”

“Well, I don’t have anyone better to listen to,” David laughed. “I’m not the brightest. But I’ll try my best.”

“Oh, shush. You’re very clever.” Daniel buried his face in David’s hair. “You know that. You always make the right decisions when the time comes.”

David smiled briefly, a ghost on his lips.

“Maybe.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am a CHILD and don't write pr o n (hAHaH what's th a t) so this is all u get for romacnce sorey
> 
> uwu


	10. //claw

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for the lack of updates. I've been very busy lately writing-wise with more technical stuff for my classes. Additionally, I've been feeling really bad mentally and its been taking a huge toll on my schoolwork, family relationships, friendships, et cetera. Anyway, this is a pretty short chapter - only the first half of what it was supposed to be and not nearly as suspenseful and well written as I'd like, but I can't bring myself to write any more of it right now. I'm really sorry and hope that you enjoy what I have. 
> 
> Thank you for reading, and hopefully I'll be back and doing more writing soon!

Max sat on the shallow steps leading to the entrance of his tent, his tired eyes taking in the whole of the yard around him. It was a chilly evening, and Max kept his sweatshirt wrapped tightly against his shoulders, trying to avoid eye contact with the other kids. The sunset was meager and the sky was still gray from the earlier rainfall. The children stood around, with no particular activity, waiting for the call that told them to go to bed. Pastor Jason was talking with a couple of kids by the larger mess hall tent, smiling and laughing. He was a favorite - only 19 years old, easier to crack than the other counselors, and word had it that if you got on his good side, you’d get special privileges.

Max wouldn’t know - he hadn’t tried. It was overwhelming, and he’d spent the last two days trying to keep an eye on Daniel and Jen. The activities were bland and primarily consisted of barely disguised child labor or skills that weren’t useful in the slightest bit while living in a nuclear fallout zone. The whole thing felt mediocre, but Max had to admit; it wasn’t as bad as roughing it, and he hardly had to see Daniel at all. There were other adult men - Jason, Patrick, even a guy named Luci (though Max was _sure_ that wasn’t his real name) - that helped run activities along with Jen. There was a daily prayer and study meeting, which everyone but Daniel was forced to attend.

It was strange. A missionary camp run by people who didn’t seem to care about the actual content itself in the slightest.

It was a small staff for a rather big facility, but considering there were a little under 30 disheartened children as campers, they didn’t need a huge one. The whole thing was a tediously-built network of tents and open space on some sort of cleared, shallow plateau of rock and dirt that had probably been beautifully lush before it was corroded by nuclear fallout. In some areas, mosses and grasses were beginning to peek up through the dirt. All of the platform tents were built a little over a foot off of the ground, and the canvas was thick, keeping warmth inside. All of the tents had four cots inside, very similar to the ones that had been inside the bunker; though, the ones at the missionary camps were actually newer and nicer.

Out of the silence came a loud banging from the entrance area of the camp. No one moved. Jason wasn’t on shift, and didn’t seem to care what happened to whoever was banging on the gate. It was apparently a very common occurrence. The banging died down after a couple of minutes, leaving the whole camp in silence.

Only, it started back up a minute later with renewed vigor, and louder. Jason shook his head and left his conversation to go to the locked-up entrance tent. He disappeared inside.

The banging stopped. After a lengthy period of silence, Jason reappeared, this time donning a smile so fake that Max thought Jason’s face would crack under the pressure.

And behind him, Nikki and Neil.

Max’s whole body tensed, and it was Neil’s eyes that he met first - “Neil!” He called, motioning toward them. In an instant, Nikki had abandoned following Jason and reappeared at the step of Max’s tent, Neil not far behind. Jason followed the teens at a slower pace, muttering something about “no running” under his breath. Everyone in the yard watched these newcomers silently.

Max slapped Neil’s hand and pulled him into a tight hug, doing the same with Nikki. “Hey, guys.”

“See, Neil, I told you he’d be alive! It’s only been a few days.” Nikki said cheerfully. She was wearing a too-big Lingua Lacrosse t-shirt that she’d tied up with a rubber band around her waist and sweatpants that were worn out in the knees with grass and dirt stains. “Neil, tell him about the notebook.” She elbowed Neil’s stomach, and he gagged.

“Agh - okay,” Neil replied, holding up the moleskin notebook in his hands. “I’ve been keeping a record of what parts of nature have been affected by the fallout. It’s pretty interesting, we’ll have to go through-”

Neil was cut off by Jason putting a hand on his shoulder. “Now, kids, It’s great that you’re socializing, but I have to show you around and get you assigned activities first, okay?” He interrupted kindly. Nikki gave Max an apologetic glance and nodded.

“Right. Sorry…”

Jason immediately started to walk away from them. When the children didn’t follow, he turned. “If you’re not going to cooperate, this is going to take longer, you know.”

“I’ll catch up with you in a bit.” Nikki touched Max’s arm and then moved over to Jason, Neil following with a grunt of agreement. Jason paused, looking over his clipboard. Then, he looked up and made eye contact with Max.

“Oh, and Max? Father Darek wanted to see you under the mess hall. I would advise you not to be late.” Jason’s tone was casual, but his eyes gave way to sympathy as he saw the horrified expression that Max couldn’t quite hide fast enough. “Don’t worry, it’s a mandatory health checkup, since you’re new. Just need to make sure you don’t have any crazy diseases.”

Max’s mouth opened, but no sound came out; It took him a second to manage a swallow and nod. “Yeah. Whatever.”

And with that, Jason left, Nikki and Neil in tow. Max shook his head at his friends’ backs. Then he shoved his hands deep into his jeans pockets and grimaced. He didn’t like to be scared of things. But the way Daniel had glared at him...it wasn’t bitter or angry. It was as if Max wasn’t really a boy or even something hated, but rather a _problem_. A problem that Daniel already had the answer to. Something easy to read, easy to solve.

It made Max shiver.

 _Mandatory health checkup_.

He walked, head low, into the mess hall tent. It was dark and unlit in the evenings, and as the only tent that wasn’t raised on a platform, black rain was still pooled in more than a few areas. Max pushed himself onto one of the long tables and walked down that instead to avoid hopping around the dangerous water in his already stained converse.

Daniel’s “office” of sorts was actually an area underneath the mess hall that had literally been dug out of the ground to some extent. Maybe there had been a natural cave of sorts - more likely, some poor kids had been forced to dig it out over the course of a several months. Max didn’t understand why Daniel couldn’t have just set up another tent, but he found it wise not to question any of Daniel’s erratic decisions.

Max followed the misshapen steps down into the underbelly of Daniel’s office, coming down into a dim room full of… _things_. Green fluorescent light cast long shadows onto the dirty alabaster walls. Black rain dripped from the ceiling freely onto the floor, leaking, sliding through the cracks on the poorly kept tile. Steely shelving units were covered in boxes and bottles of first-aid equipment, and in the center of the room, a rusted dentist’s chair out of every child’s nightmares. The whole room smelled like sickness and something terrible and sweet.

A hunched figure brooded over a desk in the corner, prominent spine splitting up from the collar of his dark green polo shirt and into his pale hairline.

the whole place looked like something out of a horror movie.

Max pushed his chin up, not quite sure what to say. A dead silence fell over the room.

“Sit.” Daniel didn’t turn around. Instead, he motioned loosely to the chair with a gloved hand, sounding bored. Max ignored his fight or flight instinct and sat.

After a long minute of sitting, Max couldn’t help a snide remark.

“A dentist giving checkups? I guess they were short on real doctors, huh?”

“You _must_ be Max. I assure you, I’ve heard all about it.” Daniel’s sarcastic reply sounded like it was being pushed through a gag of some sort, or as if he were wearing a thick retainer. Daniel turned slowly and Max immediately regretted the stupid things that had come out of his mouth. Daniel’s eyes were red and bloodshot, his face covered in a sheen of cold sweat. Mucus streamed out of his nose and down onto pulled back lips and bared teeth, swollen red gums leaking pus or blood or some disgusting mixture of both. Saliva dripped down his chin.

Max was silent.

A few strained breaths forced themselves through Max’s throat, but he had no intention of making any sort of gesture other than a quick nod. Seemingly satisfied, Daniel’s eyelids dropped over swollen blue eyes and he turned to a clipboard, making notes that Max couldn’t quite pick out. Daniel covered his rotting mouth with a light blue surgical mask and coughed hoarsely a few times, swearing under his breath.

“Tell me, where do you live and where were you when the bombs were dropped?” He asked, the mask muffling his already quiet words.

Max tried to catch Daniel’s eyes to see how serious he was, but couldn’t read him in the slightest. Daniel wasn’t even looking at him.

“I live in Lingua. Most of the town made it into a bunker. I went there.”

More writing. Daniel’s handwriting looked like messy chicken scratch, trailing off the page where his hands trembled and slipped.

“How long have you been living in fallout?”

“Less than a day before I came here.”

“I see.” Daniel muttered. He stopped writing. “Do you eat meat?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

There were a few more basic questions - estimated height, estimated weight, known health issues, et cetera - and Max almost felt himself relax, watching Daniel crack his spine backwards and groan before cracking his neck and wrists.

“Was that it? Can I go now?” A bit of the old annoyance leaked into Max’s tone, and he hardly felt himself regretting it. That is, until, Daniel shook his head. Daniel went through a box on one of the shelving units, the contents of which Max could not see but made him once again uneasy.

Daniel pulled out a long, slightly rusted machete.

Max’s nails dug into the arms of the dentist’s chair. His whole body tensed, then relaxed, halfway in between panic and acceptance. Desperate words fell out of his mouth, nonsense about stabbing and danger and just letting it happen - but Daniel made a strange snorting sound and held it out to Max calmly. Max didn’t take it.

“ _Don’t_ test my patience.”

Max took it.

The handle was smooth and cold, tempting. He’d never been the nicest kid on the block. He’d never _stabbed_ anyone either, though. When Max looked up, Daniel was staring at him.

“A machete? Do you _want_ me to fucking kill you?” Max said disgustedly, gripping the machete like a lifeline.

“You won’t. You couldn’t even if you had the balls to try.” Daniel’s chest heaved, and he boomed with what seemed to be an unraveling attempt at a casual laugh.

“Then why don’t you just kill me? Make up your mind.”

“I am not going to kill you. You remember our condition about raids, I hope? Well, in an effort to get rid of you, I am going to send you and your two friends out to raid an abandoned settlement a good ways away. One other kid is going to go with you.”

“Who?” Max asked. Daniel ignored the question, his bloodshot, swollen eyes boring holes into Max’s own.

“You need to make sure that this other child dies.”

“Seriously, what the fuck?”

“I’m giving you this chance to be useful to me before I ruin your life and the lives of everyone around you. It’s just a random kid. It’ll buy you and your friends some protection around here; at least, for the time being.” Daniel muttered. The hint of a snarl started to work its way into his voice, hard and cruel. “If he lives, I assure you that I will personally kill both of your friends slowly and painfully. He dies, and they stay out of...this.”

Max flinched slightly as Daniel leaned forward.

“You want me to kill another kid...so that my friends can stay alive.” He glanced down at the weapon in his hands. “Or something. What is... _this?_ ”

“Max. I thought you were smarter than this. Surely, you realize how many things you _ruined_ for me. How I got sent to jail, and was stuck ‘falling in love’ with David. I had to start over completely, all because of you.” Daniel spat out the words, looking more and more disgusted as he went on. “What a perfectly good opportunity to ruin your life.”

“Why do you have to bring everyone else into this? Why don’t you just kill me and be done with it?”

“Well, a number of reasons, hitting a few birds with one stone. I don’t like your friends, either. Or David. Or Gwen, or any of the people who screwed me over. Tell me, did you eat yesterday?”

Max thought of the actually half-decent food that Jen and Jason had served to them in the lunchroom. Some sort of hard cracker that was similar to matzah, a good portion of well-seasoned meat, and canned peaches. For an apocalypse, pretty good. Not that he’d admit it. “Yeah. It was fine, I guess.”

“Do you know where any of those ingredients came from?”

This is where Max hesitated. “Uh...no. Don’t really care, though.” He got a bad feeling about it. “Get to the point.”

“You’ve been living good in a bunker for six months. We, on the other hand, have struggled to find other sources of food.”

Max kept his mouth shut, stroking the flat side of the machete with his thumb and letting Daniel speak.

“We’ve been relying on the energy of...weaker campers.”

“So, like, child labor? Because I already knew that.”

“Think more literally.”

“Food…” Max’s eyes suddenly sparked with a dark understanding. “Cannibalism? You’re _eating_ them? You’re eating _children_?”

Daniel made that soft choking sound again, something like a laugh. “The only thing that separates an infant from an adult is a few short years. But yes. You are eating children.” He’d backed up a few steps and was leaning against the wall, watching Max’s face with a strange intimacy.

“Holy shit-” Max sat up straight in the chair he was sitting in, gave a few fruitless dry heaves, and promptly vomited over the side. Thin, watery, acidic vomit, burning his mouth and nose and making his eyes water. Gagging, Max wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his sweatshirt.

“No need to make a mess, boy.” Daniel shook his head, arms crossed against his chest. “Better grow a stronger stomach.” He growled.

“You’re fucking sick.”

In one stride, Daniel could cross the room. He could run his knife through Max’s neck. Skin so thin, bone so fragile. Max wouldn’t be able to move, to regret anything. He’d be gone.

But all Daniel did was cast a long glance at the wall, eyes out of focus. After a brief moment of silence he snapped back into reality and furrowed his brow. “We’re all going to die eventually. I think we’re doing more of a favor to these kids by killing them than making them grow up in a bitter, desolate world.”

Max hesitated, sucking on gross, spit-covered teeth.

He hated to admit it, but there was a truth to what Daniel was saying.

Would it really be so bad to end everything now? To not have to figure out how to grow up in a collapsing world? To suffer through more pain and bitter existence?

Max thought about all of those time he wished he’d been dead. What was so different now?

Nikki and Neil, maybe. A desire to hold on as long as possible. To prove to some otherworldly force that he was a survivor.

It was just some kid, right? No one important. _Friends_ were important, and unless he did this, they were going to be in danger.

Max closed his eyes and spit on the ground next to him where he’d vomited.

“Alright.”

Daniel’s mouth was hidden by the dental mask, but Max could feel his sneer.

“ _Wonderful_.”


	11. //claw, ii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one of my favorite chapters i've written for this story. enjoy.

_4 years earlier_

_Before the Fall_

_Spring_

_David and Annabeth’s house_

Gwen’s eyes were half-closed, her mouth set in a hard line. She sat on David’s couch. A glass of white wine rested in her hands. David sat in a dark grey loveseat next to the couch, red wine in his hands. A third glass on the coffee table, but full of water. It rested on the table, its owner gone. Everything felt very expensive and posh.

After a brief silence, Gwen spoke.

“Is she the one?” She asked, her tone scraping a whisper. David gave her a blank smile.

“Of course.” He replied. The wine sloshed in his glass as he swirled it around, a his smile beginning to soften. “She’s everything.”

“Huh,” Gwen said. “And I thought, after how long I’ve known you, that you would do this one thing for yourself.”

This made David laugh, but in a gentle, hushed way. “You know me, Gwen. It’s not about me this time.”

“You’re being stupid. You could have everything you want and you’re giving it up for what? Acceptance and a mediocre commitment? What’s the tradeoff, David? Where does it end?”

David’s smile had vanished. His gaze cast a lonely shadow over the ring on his finger, reflecting against the side of his wine glass.

“There’s no end to this, Gwen.” His voice cracked. “This is the end _goal_. We’re adults now.” He had the showiest swallow of anyone Gwen’d ever seen, a whole spectacle. He stuck his neck out and his adam’s apple bobbed furiously. “This is my commitment. This is my happiness. I’m going to have a daughter, Gwen. Isn’t that all I could’ve ever asked for?”

There was a long silence.

Gwen closed her eyes and sighed.

“A baby girl, huh?”

“ _A baby girl_ ,” David repeated warmly. “One of our own.”

He took a long sip of wine. Gwen wasn’t looking at him anymore, her gaze cast out the window in an introspective manner.

“Sure, David,” she said. “You tell me how that works out for you.”

 

_4 years earlier_

_Before the Fall_

_Summer_

_Camp Campbell_

It was a rainy monday morning. Both Daniel and David had been up for hours, milling around the cabin with no particular intention and waiting for the shrill yells of campers to draw them outside and prepare some sort of makeshift inside activity. David anxiously bit at the pink eraser on his pencil, sitting in a swivel chair and writing down ideas on a notepad. Every so often he’d ask Daniel a question, ones that he almost immediately answered himself - “Do you think they’d do macaroni art again? Oh, no, probably not. There’s only so much pasta, too, I’ll have to make a run to the store soon…”

Daniel, who was reading on his bed, typically found these random outbursts irritating. He tuned David out and focused on his book.

“...Daniel? Hey, Daniel!” David’s voice broke through Daniel’s concentration.

Daniel looked up, biting the inside of his cheek to keep himself from saying something too cold and putting David into a bad mood for the rest of the day. “Hn? What is it?”

“That story you were telling me the other night,” David replied softly. “I wanted to hear the ending.” He put his pencil and notebook down on the desk, drawing his legs up onto the chair and folding his hands in his lap. “Please?”

Sighing heavily, Daniel shook his head ever so slightly and turned his book upside down onto the bed so that the page wouldn’t be lost. “Of course,” he said in a soft, low tone. “Come here. Sit.”

David obeyed, smiling giddily and taking a seat on the edge of Daniel’s bed. “Gosh, I just can’t _wait_ to hear the ending…”

Giving David a dry smile, Daniel straightened out his spine and took a deep breath. “Where was I, again?”

“...he’d been shattered and put back together? Or something like that.”

“Right…” Daniel closed his eyes, rubbing them thoroughly and pushing a hand through his hair. He had no desire to continue telling story, but if it would subdue David...well, at least for the moment, things were going to be okay. “Right. Okay.”

_Little David felt struck by this realization. It was something in the vein of any childish mind given way to horrid visions in an attempt to explain what had happened to him, but still valid - still just as scary._

_More terrifying, the fact that he couldn’t bring himself to care nearly as much as he knew that he should. All David could think about was how dirty he must be, how nice it would be to take a shower and dress in freshly laundered clothing. His features were disgusting and distorted in the metal tray, and he rubbed fruitlessly at the grime streaked across his face._

_“Please, I want to get out,” David whispered, his voice strained and fragile. “Please, Gwen, there’s got to be a way.”_

_“I’m sorry. There isn’t, not until they can figure out what’s wrong with you.” Gwen didn’t look sorry at all. “But-” she paused. “You can send me notes if you want. We can write to each other. I’ll keep you going, okay?” Her tone was almost comforting, hinted with something that was on the edge of pity._

_David dried his tears with his forearm and nodded. “Yes.”_

_“Alright. Just tell them you want to write to me, and I’ll make sure that they let you. They listen to me.” Gwen said. “I’m gonna go now. But I’m sure you’ll be alright. Don’t die.”_ _  
_ _“Thank you.”_

_“Welc.” Gwen smiled icily at him and walked out, flipping her blonde ponytail._

_The next time that the doctor came in, David cooperated without struggle. He’d gone limp, and as they propped him back up in the chair and shoved fresh needles under his skin, he could only think about the fact that the chair looked awfully like the kind you’d see in a dentist’s office._

_He closed his eyes._

_The sleep brought a familiar dream._

_He was sitting in a strange kitchen, and someone - his mother, but...different...was touching him. It was unnerving, and it made David feel disgusting. He wanted her to stop touching him there, to go away and just help him get the cereal from the cabinet so that he could eat. Usually, he sat there and let his mother touch him. He’d shut his eyes and pretend it wasn’t happening, because he didn’t want to whine or complain._

_This time, David looked his mother straight in the eyes, only to find that she wasn’t his mother at all but a stranger. He recoiled backwards and slipped off of the chair he was standing on, landing hard on his side. The pain made his eyes prick with tears. David rolled onto all fours, looking up at the stranger that he was so sure had been his mother. In fact, every time that David looked away, he couldn’t really remember what the stranger looked like - just vague memories of his mother, who was so sweet and kind and would_ never _try anything questionable with her son._

_David looked up with slight disgust, and he felt his top lip curl. This wasn’t his mother. It would never be. The stranger was talking to him, but David wasn’t listening; he stood up and walked over to the counter, where an apple was split into pieces and a long knife beside it._

_This was the knife that had killed him, the prior times that he’d had this dreams. David would complain, and the stranger would grab the knife and kill him and he’d wake up, the worse for wear, in that dentist’s chair._

_He took a deep breath._

It isn’t real _, he thought._ None of this is. It’s just dreams _._

_Just dreams._

_With shaking hands, David slit his own wrists. He slit his wrists and it_ stung, _the cold metal cutting through flesh and welling up with blood. He felt tears, and his eyesight blurred, and soon the whole world was blurry, and everything felt far away and white and he couldn’t stop the tears running down his face or the blood on his wrists -_

_And he woke up._

_With a startled gasping for breath, David’s eyes shot open. His heart was beating wildly. He checked his wrists and sure enough, they were drenched in blood, but with no seemingly open wounds._

_He screamed with more awareness than he’d ever screamed with before._

_And then, everything went black._

 

-x-

 

It was a hot day.

Max was surprised; all of the days since he’d come out of the bunker had been rather chilly, like spring was just barely grabbing hold. The wild fluctuations in temperature were rather frustrating, usually shielded by his hoodie, Max would have cared less. What he cared about, however, was the crippling heat that had decided to show up - that day, of all days.

He was absolutely bitter about it.

He stood in the center of a completely abandoned neighborhood in the middle of the nowhere. Beside him, Nikki, Neil, and Salem - that boy he’d made muffins with the other day - shuffled around, kicking stones and breathing in the warm, irradiated air. In one hand, Max held a machete. In the other, a large Trader Joe’s shopping bag that was worn in the corners. Nikki held some sort of makeshift backpack in her hands and had taken to complaining about why _she_ wasn’t getting a machete as well, to which Neil shook his head and scribbled on the notebook cradled in his arms.

Salem, shuffling behind in the dirt, just frowned at them. Max would steal glances at him and sweat, both from nerves and heat.

That was the kid.

That was the kid that Max was going to corner and stab, pushing the machete through flesh and bone.

It felt easier in concept than real life.

Max felt sick. His stomach turned at the thought that that boy was going to become food, muscles torn to flay over a fire and eventually get shoved into the mouths of other children. More sickening, the fact that he was about to play in part in that process.

“So, where do we look first?” Nikki’s shrill voice snapped Max out of his own head, and he took a deep, agonized breath.

“I guess we just start with searching the houses. We can split up and get the job done faster.” He said, bringing himself up above the other kids. Neil made a face like he wanted to object, but didn’t say anything until Nikki prompted him to.

“Maybe we should stick together...it seems awfully dangerous to just run off and...you know...run off.” Neil muttered, and Salem gave him a half-nod. Max’s lip curled. If they stayed as a group, it would be harder to pick Salem off from the rest of the group.

“No,” Max replied firmly. “We’re splitting up.”

Most of the houses were surprisingly intact - at least, on the outside - and they were few, spread out over quite a bit of land. A neighborhood that lost travellers wind up in on long road trips, the kind that not even a GPS would be able to navigate out of. Max was surprised he didn’t see any large farming equipment of any sort. They’d trudged for a few hours to get there, with only a few vague, written directions on the back of a pre-bomb receipt. They’d walked for so long that they’d reached an area that still had plants and trees that looked half-alive. Pastor Jason was _supposedly_ supposed to go with them, but he’d just seen them off, pointed in a direction, and shrugged.

For someone who seemed so intent on having all of the kids stay in the camp, Daniel didn’t seem to care very much about them leaving to go get supplies. Max thought about just leaving - going to one of the houses and staying there, staying with Nikki and Neil, and maybe even that other kid. Maybe they’d live normal, secluded lives. Maybe, everything would be okay.

But then there was David.

David and the way he’d looked into Max’s eyes when they’d parted. The eyes that had told him, so surely, that he was coming back.

And as much as Max hated to admit it, some part of him trusted David.

He maybe didn’t trust David with everything, but, well...Max trusted David to be good, and to do what was right. Maybe he was a pushover from time to time (okay, all the time) but he was in Max’s corner, no matter what.

“We’re splitting up,” He repeated. Nikki shrugged, but Neil looked nervous.

“Well, then...we should at least have an emergency signal or something. It’s dangerous out here, what if a rabid killer lives in one of these houses?” His tone was rushed and anxious. “I don’t think that it makes sense to just go in alone with no way to contact each other.”

“Just scream. That’ll be enough of a warning, right?” Max said, and Nikki laughed. Neil’s gaze lowered angrily.

“Hey, I’m serious! We have to be smart about this, guys.”

Nikki bit her lip and rubbed her eyes, taking a deep breath as if preparing herself. “Alright, Neil. I’ll go with you. If we go in two groups, we’ll still get all of the houses done two times as fast.” She offered, and Neil smiled gratefully at her. Max raised his eyebrows and glanced at Salem in an offhand way.

In any other situation, he’d complain about being stuck with a younger kid. But there, it seemed to fit perfectly with his plans.

“Okay, whatever. Let’s get a move on before radiation gets its foot up our asses.” Max turned the machete over in his hands and motioned to Salem. “Come with me. We’re gonna take that blue house over there, and work up this side. We’ll meet back here when we’re done. If you get lost, or something happens, just shout help or something. We’ll figure it out,” he said, already headed toward the long, wooded drive that lead to the blue house he’d been referring to. The rest of the kids offered various sounds of agreement, and Salem began to wander behind Max.

They trudged up the dirt drive in a stony silence, Max’s fist tight around the weapon he was holding. Salem held several thin plastic bags in his own hands. He was a short kid, wearing a heavily stained white tee shirt. Two faded red stripes ran across the chest and arms. He had on black workout shorts, his feet bare and calloused.

Max made it up the drive and into a wildly overgrown garden. The plants were spindly and yellow, climbing up stripped picket fence and covering the path that lead up to the steps.

He couldn’t help but think that it looked like they’d been gone for years, not just half of one.

Max hesitated at the picket fence, not exactly sure how to get inside. He took the machete and cut through some of the thicker plant tendrils that were holding the gate firmly in place. As soon as the plants were no longer supporting it, the soft wood crumbled apart in his hands. Beyond, a barely visible brick path lead up to the front door. Max froze again - it didn’t make sense to try and force himself through the most likely locked front door, and he felt himself gravitate toward a window, crushing the overgrown plants under his sneakers. Salem didn’t follow him.

“What’s wrong?” Max asked harshly.

“The plants have thorns...I don’t want to get hurt.” Salem replied, his voice soft as he motioned toward his bare feet. Max sighed heavily.

“Fuck. Okay. Wait here.”

Thinking fast, Max took his hoodie from around his waist and covered his fist with it, like he saw in the movies, and threw the machete to shatter the front living room window. The sound was earth shatteringly loud in the dead silent neighborhood, and both Max and Salem flinched. Max then used his protected hand to clear some of the residual glass away, shoving his hoodie inside the house before hoisting himself up onto the sill and inside.

The inside of the house smelled terrible.

Something had died there. It was like moth balls, rotting flesh, and urine had been pulled together in some sort of cesspool. Glass covered the hardwood floor from where the window had shattered.

Max’s human instinct told him to get out of there, to run - but he forced his muscles to relax and brought the front of his tee shirt up over his nose to dull the smell. It was a normal looking living room, for the most part. Couch, coffee table, television. There was a fireplace and a chest full of china on display in the corner.

Most noticeably, everything was set in dust.

Breathing through his mouth, Max navigated through the living room and to the front door. He unlocked it and pushed it open, taking in big gulps of the fresh air. Salem nodded thankfully at him as he made it up the front steps and into the glass-and-dust covered living room. Salem’s face immediately distorted, and he tried to copy Max’s idea of pushing his shirt over his nose. It didn’t work as well, though, and the shirt slipped down.

“C’mon. Let’s look for a kitchen or something.” Max’s voice was muffled slightly by the shirt over his mouth. He walked down a hallway and past several closed doors, the wooden floorboards squeaking and squealing under his feet. When he came to each door, he’d try the handle; one lead to a small bathroom and the other to a set of stairs that presumably went down into a basement. A kitchen-like area that lead to the back porch was built just beyond that, not a single thing out of place. Like the living room, it was covered in a thick layer of dust. A single cup laid on the table.

Max opened a cabinet, hoping to find food. Plates and cups met his hard stare. He did the same with a couple of others, only to find nothing but oregano and a box of pure salt. He almost bypassed the salt, but gave it a second glance and handed it to Salem.

_Salt is supposed to be good for preserving food, right?_

Yes. Salt was good for preserving meat.

Max stole another glance at Salem and felt his stomach toss.

“Go look in the basement, see if there’s an emergency supply or something down there.” He said offhandedly. Salem made a noise like he wanted to protest, but shook his head and headed back down the hall. “ _Tell me if you find anything!_ ” Max yelled after him.

He froze, listening to Salem’s footsteps. There was the sound of the door opening, then heavy footsteps as Salem lumbered down the stairs. The loud sound made Max wince; if there was a killer in the house, he definitely knew where they were now.

Max bit through the skin on the inside of his cheek with the sudden realization that he _was_ the killer.

He refocused in trying to clear out the cupboards as fast as possible and get away from that _awful_ smell that the whole house seemed to have. It was starting to make Max sick to his stomach. Most of the cabinets and drawers were empty, and the most appealing items he found were canned beets and a box of stale Cheerios.

He was loading everything into a bag when a shrill scream broke through his thoughts. It penetrated the walls and reverberated around the whole house, shaking the floor.

Max dropped the cans he was holding and grabbed the machete from the counter next to him, his whole body tight with anxiety. He ran down the hallway and, taking a deep breath, down the stairs into the basement.

it wasn’t as dark as he expected it to be: A small window, grimy and stained yellow, allowed little light into the gritty basement floor. It was unfinished, concrete and dirt cold against Max’s sneakers. Dried black streaks dripped down the walls and stained the floor.

In the middle of the basement laid Salem, clutching his leg with a panicked expression.

“Wh...what’s wrong?” Max said warily, his tone offset and nothing like his usual unruffled gripe.

“There was a thing! Some sort of animal. It - _agh_ \- bit me!” Salem cried out in pain. Max didn’t move. He felt frozen in space and time, not sure what to do or where to go.

Other than a couple of marks on Salem’s left leg, he seemed unharmed on the outside. The bite didn’t look particularly bloody or gross. But if it was a wild animal...there was no telling what kind of diseases it had, or what the radiation had done to it. Or, if there were more of them that were going to come back. Max felt the machete in his hand, the cold handle rough against his uncalloused palm.

“Come on. Can you walk? It smells like absolute shit down here, I can’t think properly.” Max said finally, motioning to Salem. Sweat was starting to bead up on Salem’s pale forehead, and he clutched his leg, eyes closed.

“I don’t - think so…”

Max groaned and pushed the machete through the bottom of his jean pocket, letting it rest on the outside of his thigh, then walked over to Salem to pull him up. They limped up the basement stairs together, Max supporting Salem’s weight on his shoulder until they collapsed in the doorway. Max considered moving him to the couch while he went and found Nikki and Neil, but the couch was covered in glass shards, and the last thing he needed was for Salem to get injured again.

Actually, scratch that. That was _exactly_ what Max needed.

Salem looked like he was in bad shape already - there was no way that the tears dripping from his eyes were due to overreaction. The color had left his face, and he was shaking slightly.

Max decided not to move him.

“Okay. Wait here. Don’t move. I’m going to get the gang. Don’t die.” He took heavy breaths through his nose, trying to let himself feel more frustrated than nervous. Salem gave him a small nod.

Max took the machete from the tear in his jeans so that he could sprint without cutting himself. And that’s what he did - he ran the fastest that he’d ever run in his life, the dirt and rubble path shooting out from under the rubber soles of his converse. He ran down the drive and into the road, where he started to shout, his voice dry and cracking with every call of Nikki and Neil’s names. After a minute of his, Nikki appeared through the trees and came running down to Max, Neil not far behind. Nikki’s eyes were wide and wild, and she grabbed both of Max’s arms as soon as she was close enough.

“What? What’s _wrong!_ Where’s that other kid?” She shouted at him, and Max only got so far as to point at the house he and Salem had been raiding before Nikki was sprinting down the path toward it. Neil, looking dazed and shaken, started after her.

“What happened…?” He asked after a moment, and Max sighed.

“The kid got bit by something in the basement. It must’ve been poisonous or something, because he’s really sick, or something. I panicked.”

“Oh, damn, okay.” Neil and Max started to jog after Nikki, reaching the entrance of the house a minute later. Nikki had her forearm to Salem’s neck, apparently trying to check his temperature or something.

“Guys, this is bad, this is so bad.” Nikki was muttering. She had retrieved Max’s discarded sweatshirt and pressed it to Salem’s forehead to mop up some of the sweat, but he still seemed like he was in just as much pain as before. Neil looked concerned now, too, and nudged Max with his elbow.

“You say something bit him? Did you see what it was, at all?” He asked, but Max shook his head grimly.

“Nah, he was in the basement. Nikki - calm the fuck down, you’re making all of us anxious.” Max said, his tone hard and determined. Nikki stopped and looked at him.

“Max, can’t you see that he’s _hurting_ ? What if he dies? We need to do something about this! We need to get back to the camp, right _now!_ ” She was practically yelling. Max froze again. This was all so foreign to him. He didn’t have the emotional response for this. He wasn’t sure what he could even _do_.

Neil took a step toward her. “Nikki, if he was really bitten by something dangerous, it’s going to be too late by the time we get back. It’s not a short _walk._ He’ll die for sure, or at least be sick beyond recovery.” He said. Nikki shook her head, silent, repeatedly patting Salem’s head as he whimpered in pain.

Max liked that idea, though. If Salem died of something else, he wouldn’t have to get blood on his hands. It would be a nice, natural death, and he wouldn’t have to do a thing. That’s how Max liked to do things. Relaxed. _Easy_.

Then, Neil cast a glance at Max’s machete.

“We...we could amputate it,” Neil suggested finally, catching both Max and Nikki’s attention. They stared at him, wide-eyed. Neil paused, then elaborated. “I’m wearing a belt, I can do a tourniquet. We could use the machete...amputate the kid’s leg. The belt’ll stop some of the blood flow, and we can take turns carrying him back to camp.”

Nikki looked conflicted, like two sides of her were fighting. Max, though, just looked bored. He stabbed the machete into the floorboards and wrenched it out. “Okay, whatever. Let’s just do it.”

“What if he dies from blood loss on the way back?” Nikki spoke up, still concerned. Neil frowned.

“Yeah, that’s possible. But it’s better than him dying now, right?” He said. “I _have_ a belt. I _can_ do a tourniquet. There’s a very real possibility that he’ll live.”

“But-”

“Can you just _decide_ already?” Max interrupted. He himself was sweating profusely, his arms tense and knuckles wrapped tight around the handle of the machete.

“Yes! Jesus _Christ_ , Max!” Nikki growled, dropping the sweatshirt. “Look, you know I’m all for wilderness survival stuff! But this is a _kid!_ He’s in no state to consent to living out the rest of his life missing a leg!”

“Oh, so it’s all about consent now, is-”

“ _Mmph!”_

Max was cut off by Salem’s loud yelp. Everyone fell silent.

“What was that, hun?” Nikki prompted gently.

“ _Ahh_ \- do it. Let him do it…” Salem struggled through each word, eyes still shut tight.

Nikki glanced up at the boys. They looked back down at her.

“Well,” she said, looking at Max, “guess that takes care of that.”

The full reality of the situation began to reveal itself to Max, and his hands shook nervously.

He could watch all the horror movies he wanted. He played gorey video games, made violent jokes.

But nothing - _nothing_ \- could prepare him to be faced with a situation where he would have to cut off someone’s leg. It wasn’t a question of whether Nikki or Neil would do it; Max was the leader, the designated party. He felt like more of a victim than Salem in this situation.

“Uh,” Max’s voice was more of a guttural utter. Nikki moved Salem to the couch, brushing glass off, and hugged him from behind. He was still clutching his leg, and it was starting to swell. Neil took his belt off, kneeling down next to Salem and securing it tightly around his lower thigh with his leg propped up and supported by the wooden coffee table. Then, he looked at Max expectantly.

“I just...how?” Max stuttered. “How do I...this is so fucked up…”

“The bite is on the ankle, so around here.” Neil said patiently, tracing a line a few inches under Salem’s knee. “Don’t try and saw it. Just hack.”

Max wanted to ask how Neil knew that. He didn’t.

Unsteady, he lined the machete up best he could with the line that Neil had traced. Max shut his eyes, took a deep breath, opened his eyes again, took another deep breath, and brought the weapon down hard.

Salem screamed.

He screamed louder and with more clarity than he’d ever screamed before. Max bit his lip, bringing the machete down again and again and _again_ , his vision blurry and smeared with red. He listened to Salem scream and scream, and Nikki began to sob, and Neil looked like he wanted to puke.

Max stopped when the bottom half of Salem’s leg was a stump hanging on by a thin patch of skin. With one final swipe, it was two separate pieces. His hands were covered with Salem’s blood. Salem had abandoned his shrieking for one long, agonized groan. His face was slick with tears and sweat, red and contorted with pain.

Neil took one look at the severed limb and vomited on the floor. Nikki was crying silently. Max felt his eyes water, and he too began to cry.

“Fuck,” Max muttered, wiping his eyes with his forearm. This only suceeded in smearing blood all over his face. “Fuck, fuck, _fuck._ ”

Salem was slumped in Nikki’s arms. Nikki hacked, spit on the ground, and then wrapped what was left of Salem’s left leg in Max’s hoodie. Max didn’t object. He dropped the machete and very, very gently, picked up the other piece and cradled it in his arms. He certainly looked the part of a killer at that point; Max had too much blood on him, too much everything.

Nikki picked up Salem the best she could and Neil (who had since recovered from throwing up) helped her secure him on her back.

“I guess we go back to the camp now,” Nikki said quietly. Max nodded. He had the worst headache he’d ever had in his life, throbbing in that area right between his eyes, making him sick.

Or maybe, it was the smell of rotting flesh mixed with vomit and fresh carnage.

 

They walked out in silence, none of them caring to speak.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :'))


	12. interlude iii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Perspective matters,, everything is subjective. When I write from different perspectives, you're going to get different descriptions of the same exact thing simply because it's a different person. Hopefully that makes sense and provides some context for this interlude. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy.

what a day

lovely animal

kisses to you and your family in this

wonderful time of celebration

 

Daniel 

 

post script:

mourn

-x-

Daniel did not like dreaming. 

He choked on his dreams, with only memories of his own weakness and his childish ways to fill the time. Some may have called them nightmares, but it didn’t make sense to Daniel. The word meant nothing to him. 

Most nights, Daniel decided not to dream at all. Occasionally, though, he’d find his willpower outsmarted by the farthest, subconscious tip of his mind. He never had warped dreams of flying or forests, though that kind of dream would have been preferable to the truth; he would find himself in darkly toned lucid dreams, filled with clocks that he could not read and a sky that stayed dim. These had only happened since he’d started using, and some part of it was soothing. Another, alarming. 

It was one of those nights. Daniel had collapsed into a much needed deep sleep, only to find himself not sleeping at all, but in his own twisted reality. Wearing a long white nightgown, barefooted, faced with a long street filled with houses and lots. 

He stared down it. It stared back at him. 

Daniel walked on the sidewalk and up to strange statues nestled in dark blue feathered grass. In front of the first house, a drowsy chain link fence covered with shoes wrapped around the whole front. There was a sign pushed into the soil of that yard:  _ Don’t Touch,  _ in someone’s messy, block script that Daniel vaguely recognized at his own. Next to it, a rusty oven open on the lawn, covered with countless brass pots and iron pans. It was strange, but Daniel felt an attraction to it. The oven was strange, like him. Strange, like his too-bright eyes. 

There were many women there. 

Not full women, though - rather, just their legs. Cut off at the waist, the women were stuck into the ground and in piles and on statues, spray painted wild, garish colors. Daniel observed the other objects in different yards. Half-buried cars that never really existed in the first place. Dog houses with pieces of dog stapled to the roof. Shopping carts raised up on podiums of crippled brick like gods. 

The houses, maybe, were the most disturbing of anything. They were rotting. The houses sagged with the weight of several hundred years, covered in navy spray paint, windows shattered and boarded with the strangest of symbols and messages. The siding was stripped away to reveal darkness and wood caved. Everything caught Daniel’s eye. Everything stole his breath and made his lungs catch in his chest. Dead cars were strewn apart, smashed against the road, shards of the windows scraping Daniel’s feet like bee stings. 

He’d done this all before. It felt too familiar. 

He walked down the street, eyes unfocused. The sharp pain of glass and shrapnel embedding itself into his feet grounded him, kept him there. He tried not to wince. Daniel hated the stained gown he was wearing. It was like his dreams taunted him, and he had no control other than to stay unfocused and limp down the street. 

No. He was staggering then. He was halfway down the street, stumbling around topless legs and disembodied torsos. Abandoned shopping carts fitted with shoes. Ice cream trucks, ambulances, painted with strange red markings. And at the very end of the road, a podium. A wooden podium painted with a dark blue cross and covered with junk. 

Daniel walked until his knees were bucking with the pain of the devil’s fingernails digging into each ankle. 

He almost stopped. 

But he’d never had to stop before. 

He’d taught his demons to walk, their bruised bodies taught to wear his own skin like a cast-off, something he had shed to get to the spirit inside, like he was haunting his own reincarnation and no longer himself. It was toxic. It was poison. It was his own lysol, his own bleach. 

Daniel took a long, deep breath of that too thin, too sharp air and took step after step until he reached the podium. 

He climbed onto it on his hands and knees, drawing himself up with his arms and giving, just barely, a small gasp of relief. 

Daniel stood up on the wood like nothing had ever happened, opened the book that was propped up on the podium, and laced his fingers together, staring down the street. 

The street stared back

and he smiled. 

-x-

Daniel loved the way that David needed him. 

It was all about lies; They laid on beds of deceit. Their compliments were falsehood upon falsehood, enough to fill any book. And when they kissed, it was something dark and delicious. And oh,  _ god _ did Daniel want to open David up. 

In more ways than one, it seemed. 

It was a bad spot for him. 

But there were other times; times in which Daniel would remember that he was a god, and David was a passtime, and they lived in a cabin together in the middle of nowhere. Nowhere, with a bunch of children running around like it was a full time daycare. In June, the long days of entertaining kids had been excruciating. In August, they were no better - worse, even - but Daniel had a newfound love for just  _ holding _ David at night. Letting David curl up against his chest and running his hands through that soft red hair. They loved in the dark, whispering little lies and promises of forever under fairy lights and fireflies.

Then, it was over. 

David went home, Daniel had to deal with reintegration programs, and everything was finished.

David, going on, shifted into his normal routine. He’d given Daniel his number, but no one ever called. He’d given Daniel his email, but David’s inbox stayed pitifully empty, save for a few various e-newsletters he’d subscribed to years ago. Well, at least they kept him company. 

Better than the void. 

Daniel  _ had _ come back. 

He hadn’t meant to; it was a liability, connections. But he’d spent so much time being rehabilitated that he’d suggested to Jen that they settle down and just try to live life for a while. He’d taken up poetry, dabbled in journaling. The thoughts of desk jobs and tending to a garden seemed sickeningly mundane to Daniel, but they had started to become more appealing. He  _ had  _ a degree. It would be so simple to just not think and start doing.

Daniel found himself thinking more like David every day that he spent doing life counseling and therapy. 

Over a few months, he’d been to job interview after job interview, but no one dared hire him after one glance at the charges that Daniel had previously faced. So he found the town where David lived, some washed-up town on the base of a mountain. A population of just over 5,000. In the pictures, everything looked run down and trashy. Old and unkempt. It gave Daniel chills. 

It only took a few google searches to find where David worked. A small daycare on the edge of town, in a crusty renovated space make of crumbling brick and the negative space between holes in drywall. Grubby donated toys and chubby-cheeked kids with fists full of goldfish smiled at the camera on David’s facebook page. All of his pictures were of kids, kids, kids, climbing on playgrounds, rolling in grass, kicking balls around. David was smiling in most every photo, looking like he’d found his calling. His place in life. 

And damn, call him simple-minded, but Daniel couldn’t bring himself to hate it as much as he used to. 

Daniel found the address. He’d been living in a supervised group home for men out of jail (as almost a “probation period” of sorts), and the best behaved tenants were allowed special privileges; Daniel had been there for a few months, and he’d finally gotten on good enough terms with the overseer to let him take a drive. Of course, he wasn’t allowed to go alone. The overseer - a tall, imposing man named Chris Lucas.

Now, even though David had fed him well over the summer, Daniel was still no hunk. He had a little more weight on those skinny, malnourished arms of his, but barely. Chris, on the other hand, was fucking  _ ripped _ . He had guns that made AK-47s look like toys. Daniel looked like a prepubescent teen in comparison. Daniel didn’t intend to do any escaping from Chris - though, if he wanted to, Daniel was cunning enough to devise a plan to get away. But it didn’t really  _ matter _ . He was going to see David, and that was good. A neutral good. 

They got into Chris’ big, rusty pickup and took the few hours drive up to the small, mountain town of Lingua. 

Chris tried to make small talk and conversation at first, but Daniel’s replies were dry and removed, and they both eventually fell silent. Daniel hadn’t felt stunned in many years, or even remotely moved by anything at all. The scenery while driving on long, twisted paths up hill after wooded hill was breathtaking. For some reason, though, Daniel couldn’t find the headspace to make an attempt to enjoy it. He was distracted. Worryingly distracted. Distracted by the thought of seeing David again, seeing those bright eyes and toothy smile and coarse auburn hair. 

Daniel buried his head in his hands. 

He felt so disarmed, so dirty, and he hated it. 

He hated even more the realization that he didn’t hate it as much as he should. It was bitter and left a nasty taste in his mouth.

Yet, they kept driving, the truck bumping and wheezing down the road. 

They drove over the tall hills and through wooded plains, the sun high overhead. It was nature at its finest. Chris rolled the windows down and cranked the radio up; all of the stations were fuzzy and out of focus, but he managed to find something 90’s that didn’t have too much static behind it. Daniel tried to block it out, but the whiny guitars hammered into his skull. He pasted on a duly unpleasant smile and continued to look out the window. His arm hung outside of the car, feeling the satisfying resistance of wind lacing through his fingers. 

Eventually, the 90’s station went completely dead. The silence was not the relief that Daniel had been silently begging for. After fiddling with the slide radio for a moment, Daniel found a talk radio show hosted by some small town that they were passing by. Daniel didn’t listen to what he was saying but rather listened to the inflections of the host’s tone, trying to place faces and emotions with each few words. This was a common exercise for him. He often practiced recognising and guessing people’s emotions, reading people’s voices. The feeling of power that it gave him was drunkening. 

The truck pulled through. Daniel felt his mood lift somewhat as he spotted a large wooden sign down the road. The sign was covered in moss and leaves, lichen eating at the bottom half, a strong beam of light breaking free from the treetops and hitting the words. It was painted a dark blue with stark white letters that said, “ _ Lingua Township _ ” across the top and “ _ A Place to Call Home _ ” just below. 

Daniel waited, feeling strange emotions gnawing at his stomach and a headache forming in his temple. 

They pulled up the mountain and reached a freshly paved road, much different from the crumbling blacktop and packed dirt of the roads they’d taken getting to the town. 

It really was much nicer than the pictures. 

Daniel curiously absorbed the sights surrounding him. It was a small town mall of sorts - little shops everywhere, sharing space and selling products under tents outside of the brick buildings that they were housed in. People littered the street, not really caring to move out of the way for Chris’ oversized truck. It was a gorgeous Saturday morning, clouds giving way to sun that reflected across mosaiced sidewalks. 

Chris swore under his breath as he navigated through the streets and finally, into a public lot. 

“I’m gonna go check out the market, while we’re here. You’ll be chill, right? We can meet back here later. Say, four. Does that work for you?” He said, glancing at his watch. Daniel nodded, a calm pout on his lips. 

“That’s just fine.” 

“Alright. Don’t go back on your word, now.” 

With that, Chris was walking away. 

Daniel had a crumpled up piece of paper in his pocket. It was a map that he’d printed out a week ago on a visit to the library. He didn’t need it.

Daniel cracked his back and then his neck, taking a few steps forward. The public lot wasn’t very nice, rusty chain link and barbed wire. He considered stealing one of these cars and driving away. He didn’t. Instead, Daniel walked out of the lot and onto the shiny, main street. He walked until the sidewalks were yellow and stained and the road was once again dusty, caulked-up asphalt. The lawns were lush and green, the houses run down and covered in ivy. Most of the driveways were dirt that pulled up to sagging one-car garages. Daniel saw a few children playing kickball in one of the yards, but it wasn’t flat - the road dipped and rose severely, evident of the mountain that it’d been carved out of. 

That part wasn’t much nicer than the pictures. 

Daniel was wearing a grey hoodie. He had a white tee-shirt with Eminem on it underneath, slim blue jeans, and rotting black sneakers. They were all things he’d scraped up from a lost and found, and he looked very, very normal. Daniel kept a nearly clean shave and slouched a little. 

He was okay with that. 

He walked along the street with his hood up until he came to a crusty old building at the end of the road. Here, the houses had given way, and the only thing that sustained the quickly disappearing road was an old, sun-bleached gas station and a sad building offset from it on the opposite side of the path. 

The sad building was more sad in person. A gross-looking brown car was pulled up next to it, covered in dirt and muck. The windows were stained. Daniel felt a small tinge of...what was it? Happiness? Contentment? He didn’t know. Not that any of the feelings were foreign to him. Daniel felt  _ happy _ when he recognized his god-like powers to manipulate and influence people. He felt  _ content _ when he’d done acceptably on those things, and when he thought about his life after death. 

But after all this time, those desires almost seemed to fade. Daniel could see himself in this town. On the city council, even, and get some of these neighborhoods fixed up. 

And the car in front of him -  _ David’s car _ \- would bring him to work in the mornings, take him home afterwards. 

Daniel smiled, but not his irritable, frustrated smile. A small and genuine one, barely widening the corners of his lips. 

There was a large window in the front of the sad building and several on the sides, letting light filter through. There weren’t a ton of kids there that day. A few sat in the corner, collectively building a fort out of bright red cardboard bricks. One younger child sat in a rocker. Another, in front of an old school box television, watching a show with dancing animals. Every few seconds, a black-and-cyan strip flickered across the top of the screen. The child would slap the side, and it would return to the show. 

Daniel watched the children play. He didn’t see David. There was a woman there, though, a dark-skinned girl with long curly hair tied up into a ponytail. She held a toddler in her arms, running around to check on the children every few minutes. Eventually, she brought each one a Dixie cup full of animal crackers out of a giant clear tub full of them. The light inside of the place was oily, but the light from outside neutralized it, and all of the children seemed to be satisfied and having fun. 

It reminded Daniel of camp. 

It reminded Daniel of his own childhood. Before he didn’t feel as much. Before he understood his purpose. 

Daniel turned from the window. This was definitely where David worked. He decided to go inside and ask the woman if she’d seen him. 

The door rang a tinny-sounding bell, and some of the kids looked up from their toys. Some didn’t. Daniel parked himself in front of a low desk with a computer and random important-looking papers scattered across the top of it. There were a few framed pictures on the wall and on the desk, mostly kids having fun. One had David in it, playing soccer with an enthusiastic little boy in a yellow shirt. They both looked ecstatic. 

The ponytail girl - no, woman - finished putting the lid on the animal cracker tub, resumed carrying the toddler she’d been holding before, and walked over to Daniel. 

“Hi!” She gushed, smiling kindly at him. “What can I do for you today?” 

Daniel felt himself returning the smile out of habit, but in a stiff, ingenuine way. “I’m looking for a man named David. He owns the place, correct? I was hoping to catch him here.” He replied in a polite, clipped manner. The girl smiled knowingly at him. 

“Looking for David? Well, I’m afraid he won’t be in today,” the woman said, sounding disappointed for him. “He’s had norovirus the past couple days. He’s not contagious anymore, but is taking a day off to feel beet and stay on the mend. As you can see, there’s not a ton of kids here. Everyone’s home sick.” 

There was an old pang of disgust that struck Daniel’s stomach. He hated sickness. He hated everything to do with being ill. He swallowed, pushed down the urge to express that blatant disgust, and shook his head. “Right. Sorry to bother you, ma'am. Do you know how I might contact him otherwise?” 

“Oh, he lives just down the next road over. It’s a dead end - white house next to a clearing, you can’t miss it. You should find him there. He’s not so sick anymore, but it’ll be good to send someone to check up on him anyway.” The woman said. The toddler in her arms giggled through a mouthful of animal crackers. Daniel got sprayed with crumbs. “You don’t even have to go back through the main road. Take a shortcut past the gas station and through Jussy’s backyard, she doesn’t mind. I think Annabeth might be home too, she probably hasn’t left for work yet. You okay with that?” 

Daniel didn’t know who Annabeth was. But he nodded, thanked the woman, and headed back outside. She’d spoken to him like he already knew who these people were, where everyone was.  _ Small town life _ , he guessed. 

Daniel crossed the street, staring at the rundown gas station. The rundown gas station stared back. 

Behind it, there was a tall wooden fence. The fence gate was propped open, leading into someone’s backyard. Daniel concluded, walking through the gate, that this was Jussy’s backyard, unmowed, full of tall grass and wildflowers. There was a trampled path through the yard that wrapped around the side of the house, taking Daniel out onto another dead end street.

He looked silently at the house across from him. 

The garden was beautifully kept.

Gorgeous, even. 

There was a lush tree in the front yard, warm with the explosive colors of mid-fall. The flowerbeds were still in bloom, chrysanthemums and goldenrod vibant against the mulch, smelling of fresh-cut grass and rain. The house itself wasn’t that impressive, though; it was simple, like most of the other houses in town. Two stories, the sides painted a plain white. The paint was stained with age and covered with ivy, but it didn’t look half bad.

Daniel slunk into the woods next to the house and went around to the backward. Behind David’s house was a small clearing filled with tall grasses, wildflowers, and a pretty red porch. The porch had a table (then, with a dirty plate on it) and two glass sliding doors that lead out into the backyard. One of them was propped open letting in the still-warm fall air. Daniel made sure to stay hidden in the shade of the trees. He watched the doors almost shyly. 

Just as he hoped, David emerged from the house a minute later, still in pajamas. He held a steaming mug in both hands and took a seat at the outdoor table. Then, he brought a notepad out - a yellow legal pad that Daniel recognised - and began to write, taking small sips of whatever was in the mug as he did so. 

Daniel took a deep breath, hidden, his heart pinned against his ribcage like a moth begging to escape, begging to see the light. He wanted to bound over to David so badly, like a reflex, like a  _ relapse _ \- but something stopped him. Something, maybe his newfound awareness of social acceptability and conformity. Something, maybe his suspicions and hurt and everything else. 

Something. 

So Daniel crouched behind a tree and watched David from one hundred feet away. He watched David sit there and write, drink from his mug, and deep breathe. He watched this in utter satisfaction, like no man’s demons could be made happier. 

David’s head lifted from his work. Daniel could see him glance back at the glass doors, then smile that pure, overjoyed smile. That smile was so good but something told Daniel that it was wrong, all wrong, and someone was coming out of the glass doors, and Daniel felt his stomach drop--

It was a woman. One that looked shockingly similar to the woman that Daniel had talked to at the daycare, except for the fact that this woman - the one that David was smiling at - was extremely pregnant. The kind of pregnant that was basically bursting at the seams. And Daniel watched painfully. This must’ve been Annabeth. But the woman at the daycare had seemed so knowing about Daniel, had asked if Annabeth being home was alright, and he hadn’t even known about her. David was  _ his _ . They were probably roommates of some sort. The whole town was a disaster anyway, living situations probably weren’t the best. There had to be some other explanation. 

David pushed his face gently against Annabeth’s belly, kissing it, and they smiled and laughed and Daniel felt himself sinking, shaking, with a no no no and a stop it and  _ this is some sort of lie _ . His hands dug into the rough bark of the tree and he let it bruise and cut his hands and ground himself, try to stay present and not ready to grab a knife and give both of them the painful, agonizing deaths they deserved. 

It took everything in him not to march over and kill them or kidnap David or both. Daniel bit his lip until his bottom teeth started to sink through and let the taste of the blood and the pain from his cut hands take him away, take him away enough, and he felt slipping and sliding and there was nothing he could do but sprint back to the public lot and crawl under Chris’ truck, crawl there with his demons and the asphalt beneath him and cry and sob and rip out everything his hands could reach on the underside of the truck. 

He didn’t kill anyone, he didn’t kill himself. 

He scratched at his arms until they bled and cried out in pure shock, and it felt delicious and so much more satisfyingly painful than anything David could have given him. 

When the ambulance came, and people touched him and told him it was going to be okay and asked him what was wrong, Daniel let them. He blacked out and went limp and didn’t let himself hear them. 

 

When he finally came to himself again, he was still numb. 

His demons had fallen, and could no longer walk, no longer hold himself up. He felt oddly. A new type of pain. He saw clean white walls. White sheets, white curtains,  _ white gown _ . 

He was covered in half-healed bruises and scabbed cuts. 

In the bathroom attached to what seemed to be the inside of a hospital room, there was hot water running for a bath that was being left unattended. Daniel pushed his hand into the warm water. It felt too nice against his skin, too sweet. He’d always had this problem with baths. 

Daniel searched until he found a cabinet filled with chemicals. He pulled out a bottle of Clorox bleach. 

And then he added just enough to the bath. Just enough to where it stung, a little bit, to the point that it made his skin red and his eyes water. 

Daniel took a step into the bath, feeling less unfeeling than he usually felt and more inhuman. His heart felt gutted, so much so that the way it pounded against the inside of his chest was agonizing in the way that new, delicious sort of pain was. 

He smiled. 


	13. //Crush

_David kissed Daniel’s shoulder, a small, rowdy little girl in his arms, and for a moment they seemed like the perfect nuclear family._

_Well, maybe not perfect. Good enough._

That was all David could think about.

He kissed Annabeth’s pregnant stomach, and for a moment they _were_ the perfect nuclear family.

There was a funny little feeling of loss that came with that realization. It dawned on both of them at the same time. Like most adults, they reacted with their practiced, dry little laughs that don’t really mean anything at all. David felt the corners of his lips tug upwards into a smile. That was good. That was normal.

David still didn’t feel very good - maybe it was leftover nausea from the norovirus, but there was an unsettling undertone to it. Something uncomfortable, like another hot, rubbery skin pulled taught against his own. Annabeth looked at him, dark eyes overcast with concern.

“Are you feeling okay, David? Do you need some more ibuprofen?” She asked, but David just smiled and waved it off. “Oh, and I should probably get the dishes done before I’m off…”

“Oh, don’t worry about it. I’m fine, I’ll get the dishes later. The only thing _you_ have to do is relax until you leave for work.” He grinned at her. She laughed and smiled back. Normal.

It was all very uniform.

David had been writing down his ideas in routine fashion for different camps he would cover the next summer. He always spent plenty of time planning, or else the carefully balanced schedule wouldn’t be able to compensate for every single activity - or, perhaps, the best schedule wouldn’t be carefully balanced but rather, secure. All things he had to figure out and before camp started in the summer. And since he was in charge, well - that meant spending a lot of time avoiding the camp’s reputation for finagling money and figuring out how to keep campers coming back.

Gwen wasn’t planning to return next summer. David wasn’t upset with her. He was so thrilled that she’d finally found something that she wanted to pursue, and their friendship continued. Often, Gwen would drive in and they’d spend late nights talking their lives out over dessert wines and the gentle mumble of the television. They’d discuss The Farmer’s Almanac and the weather forecast of the 1980’s. That day’s news. What magazines had the most accurate and unbiased representation of the news.

Life continued.

Life continued on without Daniel.

It seemed to stop at times, but David knew it was always going. Plenty of things made it bearable, made it move. The wide smile that appeared on the faces of toddlers while they ate fistfuls of goldfish. The “hello” and “hey” from people all around town at the grocery store, the _“how’s your wife?”_ from the cashier. The feeling he got when he spotted Max and his friends tearing through the streets on rusty bikes. Life carried on. David was thankful. Heartbroken, maybe. Overly sensitive, maybe. But what should he have expected?

It was only a summer.

David added _Space Camp - Trampoline?_ to the bottom of the list in his blocky handwriting and stood. “I’m going to go nap while I can,” He said to his wife. “I’ll take care of the dishes, though, so don’t worry about it. Take it easy at work.”

Annabeth nodded and they slapped palms.

David walked inside.

 

-x-

 

_4 years later_

_After the Fall_

_Late Spring_

 

David was scared to touch the dog.

He was scared that the dog - Sugar - was infected with something that would get him sick, like rabies. Or that she was covered with lice and ticks. With all of that matted fur, David wouldn’t be surprised to know that she had _some_ sort of disease. And the way that she’d come up to him so comfortably...it didn’t make sense. As much as David wanted to roll with it and stay cheerfully naive, something was stopping him.

He didn’t know what it was, the past day or so. David had been trying to pretend again, to fool himself like he usually did, but it was becoming too hard. Like he had to be alert all the time, he had to be _present_ all the time. Grounded. It gave him anxiety just thinking about it.

But he still tried to pretend, so David rubbed her down and let the dog follow him.

They walked around the side of the large school building. It was the type of building made of orange brick and too many windows, connected to an equally orange middle school. David and Sugar made their way through the parking lot and up to the main entrance. There were a few ragged-looking men and women scattered around outside, most curled up in some sort of unspoken anguish. David tried not to choke on the lump in his throat and kept his gaze downcast. He hated seeing them suffer. He knew it was naive and stupid to go around wanting to just give people hugs and friendship, but that’s all he’d ever really wanted. Now, there seemed to be less of those good feelings than ever.

David clenched his fist around the strap of his backpack and marched into the front doors of the school.

The inside was a mess.

If the outside had been rotting away - well, the interior was 10 times worse. Oil lamps were strung along the ceiling and hallways, grimy tile chipped and cracked. The plaster ceiling was coming down in damp, moldy chunks. People sat on the floor, covered in dirt, crying, bloody, holding each other - David had half a mind to leave right then and never come back. Yet, he took a deep breath, sucked it up, and walked up to the front desk. There, a man with dark hair and an olive-toned complexion sat, wrapped in a stained gray bed sheet and tapping his nails on the plywood. David laughed anxiously. He walked up to the desk and cleared his throat. Sugar barked, skittered across the tile, and disappeared under the desk.

“Ah. Excuse me, sir?”

The man didn’t look up. “What do you need?”

“Uh. Well. You see, sir, I’m looking for my wife and child. I’ve got a reason to believe they came by this way, you see - a tall woman? Dark skin and hair? She had a little boy with her? Please tell me you’ve seen _something_.” There was an element of desperation to his tone, and David took several deep breaths trying to calm himself again, lower his voice, and breathe. “It would have just been the last couple days.”

The man at the desk carried on tapping as if he hadn’t heard a thing.

“Excuse me?” David repeated shyly. Sugar had disappeared.

“I haven’t seen your wife. Or your child. But I don’t see a lot of people. They could very well have come here.”

David felt his heart sink. Not that he’d been relying on the man knowing, but in a way, he was. His hopes were strung up on the knowledge of a few people, whether someone would be able to place a face with the words he’d so readily repeat. He wanted to find Annabeth. He held onto the hope that she was alive. She was his best friend.

He felt unproportionally let down.

It sounded romantic in his head. In reality, though, hope is never as glossy as it seems in concept. Just a barrier for the ugly truth.

“-You’re free to ask around, though. Careful who you disturb.”

David bit down on the inside of his cheek, tearing holes in the flesh there. “Thank you, sir.”

He got no reply. Sugar the dog appeared from under the desk and shimmied in between David’s legs.

“Oh, c’mon. Let’s go talk to some people, yeah?” He freed her from his calves and patted her head, momentarily distracted, until the man at the desk whistled. Sugar immediately perked up and fled from David’s grasp, licking the man’s knee sloppily. David stuttered for a second before coming to the conclusion that Sugar wasn’t worth the fight.

“Uh - okay.”

Turns out he wouldn’t be having a furry companion after all.

Trying to put himself back together, David glanced wildly around the room. Everyone was huddled over and...dirty. Everything was covered in a thick layer of dust, like an antique no one had touched for years. He decided to try a different room.

Walking through the halls made David feel sick with anxiety. Those were the halls that Max and his friends should’ve been running down, the bathrooms they should have been scrawling on the walls of, the lockers they should’ve never found.

It was hard to remember that the fallout wasn’t temporary. Nothing would ever be the same for them. They couldn’t go back to that life of living in a quiet mountain town.

David glanced inside all of the rooms that he passed. Most of them were filled with more people, laying on the floor. Some, the lucky ones, had cots or sleeping bags or pillows. It was all a terribly lit mess, children screaming, the ragged breath of the elderly filling David’s ears. No one stood out. No one even acknowledged him. He continued through the winding halls of the high school, getting lost and making circles every so often. Every place he went was jam packed with people, but there was no sign of his wife or his child. Eventually, he came to a wing of the school that had been converted to a hospital of sorts. A busy double gymnasium full of wailing people in complete agony.

David felt his heart start to beat against the fragile inside of his chest. He choked on his own innate desire to help these people.

He pushed his fingers through his belt loops and tugged up, standing up a little straighter.

David didn’t like hospitals. He didn’t like seeing rows of people sick and dying, holding onto the last thread of their lives.

Most of all, he didn’t like seeing blood.

Blood reminded him too painfully of the truth, how fragile humans were. David always tried to see himself and others as strong. As independent. As wonderful. But to see the blood spill out of someone, the maggots festering underneath their skin - it was too much. It choked him up. He never wanted to see a human life be taken away from their body, no matter how in suffering they happened to be.

David remembered the man on his porch and suddenly felt a wave of nausea. He’d taken someone’s life himself.

He’d killed someone, in cold blood.

David tried to convince himself again that it was for the greater good, that the man had been suffering, and he found himself taking great gasping breaths against the wall. He wanted to puke his guts, or squirm, or both. Nobody noticed David’s discomfort in the crowded hall. After a long moment of this, he took a final shaky breath, tried to compose himself, and moved out into the hallway.

Down the hallway, there were no people. The lights flickered on and off. It seemed empty. David let out the breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding and slid down a row of lockers, taking his backpack off. He sat on the ground with his knees pulled up against his chest.

He just needed to breathe.

Breathe. Ground yourself. Smile.

 

-x-

 

_4 Years Earlier_

_Before the Fall_

_Autumn_

 

David was curled up on the couch, still in his pajama pants and a paint-stained, ill fitting top from some home improvement project a few years ago. A too-big sweatshirt graced his shoulders. The television muttered under it’s breath, and David was caught up in his own phone. Ever since the summer had ended - ever since _Daniel_ had ended - David had considered, on advice from a few others, starting to use Tinder again. It seemed silly. He didn’t like dating apps much, and most people who he matched with just wanted something fast and lewd. Maybe that was what Annabeth was into, but it never really felt right to David. He wanted someone to rely on, who relied on him. A solid relationship. Maybe he’d start feeling like himself again if he could just find someone who loved him.

Yet, there was a flicker of hope - like a thread of saliva running thin, David felt sick over Daniel. Something stopped him from starting over. David’s thumb hovered over the login button, teeth sinking deep into the flesh of his lip.

He wanted to press it.

No, he didn’t.

David turned off his phone, and with a long, drawn out sigh, got up. He tossed the phone onto the couch and turned off the television. Lumbering up the stairs, David walked into the bathroom and splashed some cold water on his face, yawning and trying to wake up his muscles. He stretched the corners of his mouth in the mirror, smiling toothily at himself, smirking, holding back a laugh. Smile exercises. They always felt nice.

He bounced back downstairs on the ball of his foot, considerably happier, grabbed his phone from the couch, and walked into the kitchen. Dishes were piled up in the sink, and he added his own dirty plate and mug to them. David set up the drying rack and set up a disney music radio on his phone, pressing play. He started to wash the dishes, warm water running over his hands, the gurgle of the drain, the soft sound of princesses crooning from the speaker calming him down further. This continued until the sink was mostly empty. David was feeling great by that point - he considered going into work anyway, even though Jada had offered to cover him for the day.

The disney music stopped abruptly. David’s ringer blared. It was Annabeth.

His heart stopped.

And started.

David picked up the phone. “Hello?”

“Hey, David - I need you to come pick me up. Please. I’m not feeling well, at all.” Annabeth’s voice was strangled and thin, and David immediately felt anxiety rising, rubbing the inside of his chest like a struggling moth. “Please?”

“Anna - should I call a doctor? What’s going on?”

“No, no. I’m feeling sick. Please, please come get me. Something’s wrong with the baby, and please-” - she let out a choked sob - please come get me. Then you can take me to the hospital.”

David didn’t change. Without hanging up, he slipped on a pair of flip flops and headed out in his lazy clothes. “I’m coming, I’m coming, right now. Just hold on. Deep breaths.” He grabbed his keys, murmuring sweet things into the phone and running outside.

The campmobile was gone. David’s voice faltered. “Uh…” Jada had it. He’d forgotten that she’d taken it to the daycare. “I’ve got to get off now, but I’m coming, okay? It’ll just be a few minutes. Just breathe.”

He sprinted across the street and through Jussy’s backyard, across another street, opening the car with the clicker on his keys and sliding in at record pace. With routine motion he started the car, pulled it into reverse, jammed the accelerator, and flung it into drive. The car ripped down the street, spluttering and bumping uncontrollably against the pothole filled pavement.

David murmured a shy apology at the wind. Annabeth worked at a small, fashionable place in the downtown area named Lana’s Boutique; she sold handmade clothing, wool socks, and candles that gave the whole store the strong, sharp scent of cinnamon and vanilla that pinched the bridge of your nose and made your eyes water ever so slightly. The Saturday market was dying down, and David was able to navigate through the streets and up to a parking spot in front of the general area around Lana’s Boutique and Rocket Fizz. He attempted to parallel park, rear-ending another car and sliding out.

There was a neat little tent that extended beyond the entrance, desolating various colorful prints and long, flowing skirts. A leftover display from the market that morning. Inside the store, everything was cramped and cluttered. Shirts lined up on racks from wall to wall, tables covered in candles going down the center. David took a deep breath that he immediately regretted, the headache-inducing, sharp pang of cinnamon making him feel clammy. No wonder Annabeth felt sick all the time, baby aside.  There was another woman standing at the register - pixie cut, pale skin, lips slathered with a navy blue matte _. Lana._

“Is Annabeth back there?” David asked, his hands fidgeting along the corner of the counter. Lana nodded.

“Head on back. You here to pick her up, I assume? I’ve never seen you without a smile, Dave.” She replied, her tone light and curious. David let his face fall into its usual toothy grin. He hadn’t even noticed that he’d been spending so much effort frowning.

“Sorry. Just concerned, you know,” David said softly. “The baby’s been making her feel sick quite often. We think something might be wrong.”

“Alright. Take it easy, man. There’s been sickness going around. I’m sure the baby’s fine.” Lana waved him back, and David nodded his thanks in return. As much as small talk calmed him down, his first priority was Annabeth.

The back room was just as, if not more, crowded as the front half. Battered boxes and bags filled the space in frenzied chaos, framing a dark, worn out leather couch, a table, and a grimy mini fridge. Annabeth was in a curled up position on the couch, a plastic cup of water on the table next to her. Her face was streaked with tears. David bounded over the boxes of merchandise and to her side.

“David-”

“Hey, it’s okay. I’m here. I know norovirus is painful - we’re gonna take you home, okay?” David said softly, soothingly, rubbing Annabeth’s shoulders.

“No, David. Look.” Annabeth took David’s hand from her shoulder and motioned to her inner thighs. David was hesitant to look, but did so anyway and immediately regretted it. Her maternity jeans were stained with already drying blood.

“Oh, no…” David’s lips parted, and he let the words spill out. “Oh, no no no. I’m taking you to the hospital, right now. Are you hurting?”

“I mean, I guess, but can we really afford that?” Annabeth sounded hesitant to go, but David was instantly convinced.

“We’re going. Here, let me help you.” Annabeth was a sturdy woman - David struggled to get her up. He managed it, through, her arm slung around his shoulder. He tied the sweatshirt he was wearing around her waist, covering up the blood, as not to raise any questions. They moved slowly out of the break room.

Lana looked concerned. She had her phone in hand. “Is everything okay? Do I need to call an ambulance for you?”

“No, thank you. I’m taking her.” David usually never spoke for his wife, but he wanted to leave. Annabeth frowned slightly at him. David gave her an apologetic look.

“I’m fine,” Annabeth said shakily. “I hope you don’t mind if I take the rest of the day off.”

“I don’t mind at all. You’re always such a help during the morning rush. Feel better, Anna!” Lana sounded genuinely empathetic, and David gave her an apologetic smile as well.

The hospital was bleak.

Their doctor gave Annabeth pain pills and David bad news.

Miscarriage. A bitter word and an even more bitter truth.

David didn’t understand. He didn’t like to say painful things out loud. He processed them quietly, quickly, so that he’d be able to keep smiling. But Annabeth didn’t need someone to smile and tell her that things were going to be okay, eventually, at some later date in time. She needed her best friend - _David_ \- to be there and hug her and make her food, let her cry silently on the couch while rewatching _The Dark Knight_ trilogy for the millionth time. She needed someone to be angry with her. David had a hard time keeping up with what stage of grief she was in at each given time.

This is why they were best friends, not lovers. They didn’t work in that way.

“Someday, maybe we’ll try for another kid?” Annabeth asked hopefully.

“If you’d want that,” David said, gentle. “We could always adopt. But I know you rather have a biological child, though.” He smiled. Annabeth smiled back.

“We’ll see what works out.”

 

-x-

 

David was having an anxiety attack.

He almost never got overstimulated. He was extroverted, very good with people, and had a high tolerance for small talk, loud noises, and bullshitting. Childcare, politics, office boss - he could do it all, if needed. When David volunteered, he was put in charge, no questions asked. He stayed centered most of the time, positive even when things went wrong.

But once he’d hit his limit, it was too much.

David left the hospital area very quickly, running into an abandoned hallway and sliding down the side of a locker so that he could rest his head on his knees. He took shallow breaths. It felt like all too much, all too overwhelming, like he was stuck over his head in cement - David knocked his head backwards against the locker behind him and yelped in pain. It drew him from his thoughts and he look a deep breath. His head throbbed angrily where he’d hit it.

Who had told him that pain was the best way to ground himself? David vaguely remembered Daniel.

But then again, Daniel was the villian, wasn’t he? David knew that, a poisonous seed lodged into the back of his brain. Whether that negated everything that Daniel had said to him, all of the wise little things and smart remarks about living your best like and the place of humans in the universe - the sort of things that David only half listened to, with sleep-drawn eyes and a carefree smile - well, David didn’t know.

God. It had been just over an hour, and this day wasn’t turning out anything like he thought it would. He felt entirely disheartened by the way things had turned out.

David looked both ways down the dark hallway, light filtering in on one end through a dust-covered window. This was too much for one day. He’d come back, maybe with Jasper and Gwen, and they’d give him the strength he needed to ask around. As much as David tried to convince himself to stay and that the job was simple and he was just being silly, it wasn’t working. _Jasper and Gwen_ , he thought. _Go find Gwen._ Gwen was strong.

he stood, sliding up against the locker and meandering down the hall and to the door at the end. It was locked, but gave way after a single firm push.

David took a deep breath of the nuclearly charged air, staring out over a forest of stripped trees.

He decided not to go through the woods. It was too eerie. He kept his head down on the way home, trying not to...look at everyone. At everything that was different and new. It was a strange way to see things - they were new, but old, in a way. A blackish, brownish sort of mold was eating at everything he could see. Any metal was covered in rusty holes. Houses were barely repaired, makeshift with planks of plywood and duct tape. And, every so often, a gunshot rang out from some distant place around the town. So, David kept his head down. The paths were still familiar to him, roads still steady. He took deep, heaving breaths, and kept his head down.

David was almost home when he heard Jasper’s scream.

The thud of Jasper’s feet, barrelling toward him much too fast.

The recoil as Jasper planted both hands onto David’s shoulders and just

kept

screaming.

“ _Davey! Come here, come here! Come now...Gwen - in the backyard -_ ” It rang in David’s ears as his legs were set on pure fire.

They sprinted toward the house.

“What’s wrong? What happened to Gwen?” David shrieked, his voice riding up as his panic rose. Jasper just shook his head miserably, face covered in tears, and ran into the backyard, David just behind him. The first thing David noticed was the man he’d shot before, corpse decomposing on his back porch. He immediately felt nauseous. But as he turned his head, he realized that that wasn’t the problem.

David’s panic immediately subsided and gave way to pure terror.

Gwen was on her knees in the middle of the yard, her chest pressed to her legs, face in the dirt. Her hands were tied behind her back with a scrap of cloth. Her hair was messy, askew in too many different directions.

“Gah...Gwen?” David asked the wind faintly, his voice ever so small. “Gwen?”

She didn’t move.

“Gwen…” He took a step forward. He held his breath. The world felt dizzy, he felt dizzy, and it was all he wanted to fall down and cling to the earth until it stopped spinning. “Gwen, wake up,” he said, numb. “Gwen-”

David knelt down at Gwen’s side, shaking her body gently, repeating her name, over and over, almost as if he was begging.

Her hair shifted, and David immediately vomited on her back.

A hole, in the back of her head. It wasn’t bleeding that badly, but it was there - a hole in her skull, a gap in bone, and oh no no, David couldn’t stop heaving -

He gagged several times, wiped his mouth, and used shaky hands to gently collect a fistful of her hair and lift Gwen’s face up from the ground.

It was a mistake.

Blood seeped from the exit wound, covering her face, clumping on her lashes, making it foreign and unrecognisable. David felt tears sting his too dry eyes more intensely than they ever had as he shook uncontrollably. And then he screamed, dropping her head back into the grass. He was frozen in time, frozen in space, too stiff to know what to do. David just stared emptily, crying, too scared to move.

Jasper came next to him and started a fresh round of sobbing.

They say there, in mourning.

“It’s not fair.” David whimpered finally, wiping his crusty eyes. “I’d just seen her once. It’s not fair…”

“I’m _sorry_ ,” Jasper wailed. “I didn’t even know what was happening. She said she was just going outside for a minute to talk to some friends, and then I heard the shot, and these men were leaving, and she was just _dead!_ ”

And so they cried, two breathing bodies amongst a backyard with two corpses. It was a miserable sight.

Eventually, David convinced himself and Jasper to move inside. They laid around Jasper’s upstairs hideout, binging on spaghettios with their fingers and giving dry sobs. David threw up everything that he ate. It was a bitter, miserable evening, and a long time until they finally drifted off to sleep. David watched Jasper sleep for most of the night.

When he did sleep, David had nightmares.

He rarely dreamed, even as a child. He slept peacefully. Without trace of anxiety or stress.

Yet, he had nightmares of Gwen’s shattered face, bruised and bloodied, something grotesque and mutated.

David woke with a start to one of these dreams in the middle of the night. His head throbbed where he’d hit it, and more just behind the eyes from how much he’d cried. His body ached from emotional and physical exhaustion. Yet, he dragged himself up, sneaking out of the room as to not wake Jasper. He paced around the house restlessly, avoiding the exposing windows and the bathrooms that smelled like months of collected urine. He saw moving things in every shadow, a fear in every corner. His body was tense and plagued with the crippling cold of fear.

At some point in the night, David heard a small knock on the door.

His first instinct was to answer it - then ignore it. He continued to lay on the couch and prayed that whoever it was would go away and leave him alone. His anxiety began to go into overdrive, and he shivered slightly.

The knock came once again, accompanied by a shy voice this time. “Please help me! I’m not infected! I just need somewhere to spend the night!”

David’s heart twinged uncomfortably. It was a child, a young girl, he could tell. It took everything in him not to stand up and let her in.

“Please…” The girl’s voice grew fainter this time, the knock weak. David broke. He stood up and walked to the front door, checking the peephole.

Sure enough, a little girl stood outside, scraped up. She was let inside. She had matted dirty blonde hair, body covered in dirt and scratches, feet bare and calloused. She wore nothing but an adult’s t-shirt, fashioned into a long, ratty gown of sorts. David felt pity for her immediately.

“Just for the night.” David said, his voice still hoarse from crying. “What’s your name? Do you need somewhere to sleep?”

“Thank you so much,” the little girl replied. “No one else would let me in. I’m Ciara. And no, I can just sit in here, if you don’t mind. I don’t sleep during the nights. I sleep during the day.”

“Ah, I can’t sleep either, though you _are_ a little girl and _should_ be getting some sleep. But it is the end of our world, so I guess staying up would be alright.” David offered. He laid down on the couch again, and pointed to the loveseat for Ciara to sit in. She sat.

“I haven’t seen you around before,” She said. “Did you come from the bunker?”

David raised his eyebrows. “You bet! I came out with a friend of mine.”

“What friend? Are they here too?”

“No, no. Though I do have a friend here, upstairs. But my other friend - he’s a kid. Someone suggested I take him to the Missionary Camp a little ways away while I spend time trying to look for my - what’s wrong?”

The shy, curious expression on Ciara’s face turned sour. “The Missionary Camp? No, no, that’s really bad. Haven’t you heard the rumors?”

“No, I haven’t heard...anything about it…” David smiled at her, the kind, understanding smile he used with children. Ciara shook her head rapidly.

“You need to go get your friend, right now. I escaped from there, barely. My parents are dead. That’s why I was sent there. It’s a horrible, cutthroat place - the children who don’t contribute are killed and-” - her eyes popped a little bit, her voice dropping to a whisper - “- _eaten._ ”

David felt his heartbeat quicken immediately.

That _was_ Daniel he’d seen, wasn’t it?

Things began to click into place.

Was Daniel a cannibal? When he’d tried to kill all of the campers all those years ago - was that with intention of eating them?

David’s too-wide eyes turned to the little girl across from him.

“Oh, god. I’ve made a horrible mistake.” He whispered. 


	14. //Scream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lmao i've been fuckin grounded so sorry for the new chap delay! It ended up being too long so I'm splitting this into two parts. Here's part one.

  

_ One Year Earlier _

_ Before The Fall _

_ Lingua High School _

_ Lunchtime _

 

It was a hot classroom, festering in the shadows of an almost summer day. 

The lights were out, sinking the room into half-gloom cut by sunlight pouring through slats in the shades. 

Abandoned desks were scattered around the room, most of them pushed together in groups of 3 or 4 to form a few different group-work formations. The only occupied desks were toward the back right corner of the room. Max was sitting sideways in his seat, leaning against the back wall of the room and his feet up on the top of the desk beside him. Nikki claimed an empty grouping of desks for herself, sprawled out and laying atop all four of them, fiddling with her flip phone. Neil sat comfortably cross-legged on top of his own desk, a notebook in his lap. He was right next to a large window, vertical slot shades sagging with the weight of time. 

Max’s brown skin was damp with sweat; he swore, and moved his foot to kick Neil’s thigh. Neil got the hint and slapped the large, rumbling box situated in the ill-fitting window. The shitty AC sputtered a couple of times. Rumbling intensified and a cool wave of stale, moldy air washed over their bodies. 

“Ah, fuck. That’s better.” Max groaned, tipping his head back so that it hit the wall. He took a large bite out of a bruised green apple, then tossed it to Nikki - it hit her forehead, but she caught it immediately after and took a bite for herself, right into the core.

“Pleh!” She spat two seeds directly at Max’s face a few feet away, hard and fast as bullets. He whipped around to face her: 

“What the  _ hell _ , Nikki?” Max yelped, getting a laugh out of both Neil and Nikki. His eyes narrowed. “Yeah, ha ha.  _ Reeeal _ funny. Now I’ve got your  _ girl _ cooties all over me.” 

“Cooties!” Neil practically guffawed. “You’re 15 years old, Max. The concept of gender-related cooties is impossible, and quite frankly, juvenile. Grow up.” 

“Jesus Christ, Neil, take a joke.” Max shot back grouchily, but the beginnings of a small smile were evident in the upwards quirk of his lips.

They settled into a comfortable silence.

“Hey, wanna come over after school and play Fallout with me?” Neil shut his notebook and glanced at the grimy watch on his wrist. Max gave a shrug, and then nodded.

“Yeah, bro, sure. I gotta check with my parents, though.” He said, then shook his head. “Fuck it. They know where I’ll be.” 

Nikki looked hesitant. “I don’t know, Neil. Boyfriend just gave birth to a litter of kitties!” She said excitedly. She quickly went from laying down on the desks to standing on top of them. Boyfriend was a female Calico cat that wandered Nikki’s neighborhood, but had decided to make her backyard something of a permanent home. “I gotta check up on ‘em and love ‘em and everything! Plus, I don’t really like playing Fallout with you guys. You make it all boring, sneaking around and trying to be good. I say we just shoot ‘em up till the wasteland hasn’t got anyone left, eh?” She made fingerguns and shot Neil a few times, a soft  _ pew-pew _ spilling from her lips. 

“We can play that part where we go through Little Lamplight, and I’ll let you try and murder all of the kids.” Max replied in his most matter-of-fact tone. Nikki jumped off her platform of desks and onto the ground next to Max and Neil with an excited giggle that resided in a sigh.

“Awww, Boyfriend can wait. I’ve got kids to try and kill.” She grinned, bringing herself up to her full height. Max grinned and held out his hand - Nikki slapped it. Neil rolled his eyes at them.

“That’s really screwed, Nikki. One day you’re gonna end up as a child killer, and I’m  _ not _ going to be the one that enables you.” He said in a clipped way, standing as well. “You can’t even kill kids in fallout! They’re invincible. Nevertheless, you better not ruin my perfect save file.” 

Nikki winked at him. 

“Don’t be silly. Plus, what’s a little child-killing gonna do to your karma? Lemme at them guns.”

 

_ One Year Later _

_ After the Fall _

 

Max’s mouth felt dry. 

He hated the way that then, at that moment, he was covered in someone else’s blood to the point that his shirt clung desperately to his skin.

He hated the way that he felt anxious and empty and  _ weak _ , so different from his typical fuckless stance. 

Neil kept glancing nervously at him. Nikki just muttered under her breath, frenzied words pleading her breath to return to normal. Gore had always seemed so exciting back before the fall; now, it was a bitter reality. The little kid on Max’s back whimpered unendingly, slobber dripping from his bottom lip and onto Max’s already bloody, dirt-covered, sweat soaked t-shirt. 

His heart was still pounding harshly against his chest, hands shaking as the blood began to cement Salem’s too-hot skin to Max’s own. 

The walk to the camp was painful under the merciless, blistering sun, and at some point Salem went completely limp on Max’s back. Months of being cooped up in a single bunker room with no movement or real nutrition had weakened Max, and his arms ached relentlessly; he wanted to drop Salem so badly, muscles burning with an ungodly fire. Max prayed to whatever supernatural entity there was that Salem was dead, or nearly. He hoped for the sake of his friends. 

Max didn’t have a whole lot to live for. But Nikki? Nikki was tough, skin of leather and fists of steel. She was a survivor. And Neil was smart — a little naïve, maybe, and definitely not street smart — but intelligent enough to hack anything back to the earliest Windows to future IOS. Maybe, when they were younger, Max had always been the mastermind. But Nikki and Neil, well — they didn’t need it anymore. 

Max romanticized the idea of death in his head as a daydream of sacrifice. Yet, below that, he could sense the bitter cowardice and desperation. 

_ Dreams, desire, and death. _ The Teenage Condition. 

They walked for hours, Nikki hurriedly guiding them in the general direction she deemed “correct”. Neil vomited several more times on the way, and it was smeared across his mouth and nose until he could only gag up a yellowish bile. 

Max had never been so relieved and so anxious as he watched the semi familiar barbed wire and chain link canvas combination break the horizon. It was positioned on a rocky crevice over a wide, irradiated canyon, menacing in the evening light. The sunset hit the fence and glared into Max’s eyes. Squinting, Max hoisted up Salem’s dead weight on his back. His arms were numb from holding him close for so long. “Almost there,” he groaned, voice soft. Nikki grunted in agreement, stopping to rub Neil’s back and shuddering shoulders.

She finished after a long moment and joined Max from his vantage point on the top of the unforgiving stone hill. Her worried glances were spent entirely on Salem’s stump of a leg. “Do you think he made it?” 

“Doubtful,” Neil cut in from behind them. Max nodded in agreement. 

“I don’t know, but I guess we’ll find out.” Max searched desperately for some sort of pulse against his back, something to indicate he had failed, but found nothing. 

The tiniest of smiles crossed his lips.

“Come on, gang, let’s get back. I’d hate to keep  _ Father Darek _ waiting.” Max used a special sort of venom when he said Daniel’s new fake name, spitting on the ground. 

They took the long way around the gorge. Nikki dropped the near empty bag that she was holding (the only thing inside being a large canister of salt and the lower half of Salem’s leg), using both fists to bang against the chain link fence that guarded the camp’s entrance. There was a long pause before anyone answered, but when the loud clomp of boots approached, Max was met with the stone cold glare of Daniel himself. He wasn’t looking too hot, though - Daniel’s pale skin was flushed and covered with an oily sheen, eyes further sunken than usual. He’d covered his face with that silly cloth mask, a bright, uncanny red with sharp white teeth painted on neatly. He seemed unperturbed by the fact that everyone was covered in blood and dirt. 

Daniel flung the gate open and took a step backward, letting the teenagers shuffle into the canvas tent that lead to the main courtyard-like area. Yet, instead of letting them walk through, Daniel closed the tent flaps on both sides and stood before the exit. 

“I see you didn’t bring much back, kiddos. Mind showing me what you’ve got in the bag?” 

Nikki growled, snapping her head up to meet Daniel’s harsh stare. “You have to help him! He’s bleeding out!” Her free hand flung wildly in the direction of Salem’s stump leg. The other held the bag, which was pushed into Daniel’s crossed arms. 

Looking mildly disappointed, Daniel took his silent gaze from Nikki’s eyes to Max’s. They rested there. Heavy. Thick. Glaring. Max didn’t dare look away, didn’t dare turn his back to the threat. He took a quick step backwards and ran into a plastic folding table with a couple of clipboards on it - the force tipped the unconscious Salem from Max’s back to the tabletop. The back of Salem’s skull connected with the sharp, raised metal section of a clipboard with a sickening thud. Blood and some other clearing fluid had cemented his amputated leg to Max’s side. 

His little chest didn’t draw breath.

“Why, you didn’t find anything but salt? Disappointing,” Daniel muttered, “but not entirely unexpected.” 

He seemed awfully out of it. 

He tossed the block of salt onto the table next to Salem’s still body, where it landed and crumbled with a dull thud. Daniel took out Salem’s crudely severed limb from the bag, dropping the latter onto the ground. He finally broke eye contact with Max, who was becoming more and more uneasy - they were in close quarters with  _ Daniel _ , a man who could easily kill all four -  _ three _ of them, in under 30 seconds, no doubt. Daniel leaned over the table that Salem laid on, the three teenagers stumbling backwards to give him some space. Max struggled to peel his shirt away from where Salem’s blood and muscle tissue had fused them together. 

Daniel took a long look at Salem’s pale, thin body, exposed bone, and bloody makeshift tourniquet. He pressed two firm, gloves fingers to Salem’s neck, and after a drawn out moment, his wrist. The silence fell thick and heavy on everyone.

“Dead,” he pronounced. Daniel didn’t look particularly distraught; his eyes found Max’s, giving the boy a strange, unreadable look. There was a long pause - the only one to move was Neil, who clamped his hand over his mouth. “Well,” Daniel continued, grabbing Salem’s body under the armpits and throwing him over his shoulder, “that takes care of that, I suppose. Go back to your tents. It’s past curfew.” 

Max watched Daniel’s hands shake and the beads of sweat gathering at his temple as the man left the tent. 

Something was wrong. 

“We need to get the hell out of here.” Max elbowed Nikki gently. Her jaw was quivering and set, eyes narrow. 

“Max, we just killed a kid.” 

“Nikki-”

“Max, you just killed a fucking kid! How are you not upset by all of this?”

“Yeah, this amount of detachment is uncharacteristic, even for you.” Neil added, pushing Max to the edge. 

“I  _ am!  _ I am!  _ I’m fucking upset, okay? _ ” Max snapped and shouted, drawing himself up to his full height and gesturing wildly. “I’m so fucking scared right now that I can barely think! I don’t want to be here, no one does, and I don’t even know what the  _ fuck _ is going on. I don’t want to die…” He trailed off and slumped over, bringing both hands to cover his face. When Max spoke again, his voice was small and fragile, wavering with every syllable. “...I don’t want you guys to die.” 

He was shaking so badly, humiliation from his outburst adding to the toxic vat of emotions festering inside of him. Max could feel Neil put a tentative hand on his shoulder, and Nikki’s firm pat on his arm. 

“We’re right here. We’re gonna figure everything out, okay?” Nikki said quietly, her hand sliding down Max’s arm and moving it away from his tear stained cheeks. Their hands locked together, and she led him gently out of the entrance tent and into the courtyard area, surrounded by tents. No one else seemed to be outside - except for pastor Jason, who made sure that everyone maintained curfew - and the three teenagers slipped into Max’s empty platform tent. Technically, they were assigned to different tents, but it didn’t matter at the moment.

“Talk to me.” Nikki’s tone was a gentle command as they all sat down on the fiber cots. Max’s gaze was fixed to the ground. They smelled like sweat and vomit and the iron taste of blood. “Tell us everything, Max, we need to figure out what the hell is even happening, and I know there are things you aren’t telling us.You tell your side of the story and we’ll tell ours, okay?” 

There was a long pause. Max rubbed his eyes, achieving nothing but smearing blood and tears across his face. 

“We went back to David’s house.” He said finally. “There’s a settlement over what’s left of Lingua, but David’s house was all boarded up, and he wanted to look for his family. There was a woman who told him that he could drop me off here like a fucking daycare while he went off and looked for Annabeth and the baby. I agreed, but I didn’t like it. A camp for kids in a nuclear wasteland felt too good to be true, but…” he motioned around himself. “Here we are.” 

“What then?” Neil prompted. He was going through his moleskine notebook, licking his fingers as he slowly paged through it. 

“Jason, or whatever the hell - he only made me fill out a form. Basic stuff. You know, the form itself was handwritten, and there was some fine print, and I don’t know, whatever, did it for David. He didn’t come with me. At that point, I didn’t know about  _ Father Darek _ and that whole train wreck - just Jason, who showed me into the mess hall tent or whatever with a bunch of other random kids.” 

“Contract, contract…” Neil’s eyebrows furrowed together, and he flipped to an empty page and began to write. “You just signed? Do you remember all of the information you gave on the form?” 

“I didn’t have a reason to be suspicious at the time, okay?” Max said defensively, but Neil dismissed it with a shake of his head.

“That’s understandable, I only wish that I’d payed a little more attention while filling out the form myself. Contracts signed by a minor are not legally binding, but I doubt that there are legal concerns in the middle of a nuclear wasteland. The point is - if there was fine print, well - there could be something much darker going on here.” Neil’s scowl turned into a lopsided grin. “But I guess we’d already deducted that, huh.”

“Duh. Get on with the story, Max.” 

Max’s face was fixed into a hard grimace. 

“So, I signed the form. I was in the Mess Hall tent. Jason tells a bunch of shitty jokes, but these kids look half-dead and like they’ve been through hell and back, so they don’t give a fuck. Honestly, this whole thing is a little strange. They’ve got to have like 40 kids here, but I hardly ever see anyone else, even though they tell us to stick to “activities”. I never even got a proper schedule - Jason just told me to go to the sick woman’s cooking class. Maybe I’m too new? I’m so fucking confused on how all of this works.” 

“I’m not sure the counselors even know what they’re doing.” Neil replied in a low grunt. 

“Makes ya miss Camp Campbell, huh?” Nikki joked, hitting Neil’s arm lightly. He let out an angry squawk in return. They both returned to deadly serious in less than a second. 

“Father Darek comes in, says some nonsense spooky stuff, Johanna comes in, tells us what tents we’re gonna be in. I check out then, slip out of the tent. Hey, maybe that’s why I don’t have a schedule.” Max said, something clicking into place in his brain. “I wasn’t there to get one.” 

Neil snorted. “Makes sense, dumbass.” 

Max glared at him. 

“Yeah, whatever, guys. Listen up. Anyway, I went after Father Darek to go see what his deal is, ’cause - well, can we all agree that Father Darek is that fucking cultist from all those years ago at camp?” Max turned his hoodie inside out to the least blood soaked part and wiped his face again, more successfully this time. Both Neil and Nikki gave him affirmative nods. 

“Right, Daniel. He’s fucking crazy if he thinks we’re not smart enough to see right through that.” Neil said, scribbling wildly in his book. “He tried to kill us once - I was sure, after that punch, he’d be dead or in jail. The dosage of poison must’ve been calculated to take out children and most likely, was not strong enough to kill a grown man - not right away, at least. The question is,” Neil closed his book, “why isn’t he in jail?” 

“Maybe he escaped after the bombs, but it doesn’t make sense. This camp doesn’t make sense. We’re probably missing something...some super murder plot he set up.” Nikki brought her legs up to sit cross-legged on the cot. 

“What I don’t get is why fucking  _ here _ . Why here of all places? He could be halfway across the world or something, but why is he squatting here in hell?” Max shook his head slowly. “Unless…” 

“Mass sacrifice?” Neil suggested, throwing his shoulders up in a nonchalant shrug. “Perhaps he’s gathering as many children as possible here to make a sacrifice to his god. I mean, he did try it on our camp when we were just little kids. It was kind of...traumatic...for all of us?” 

“Speak for yourself. That was a normal day at Camp Campbell.” Max replied snippily. “I was gonna say that he probably wanted to carry out sort of crazy revenge plot against the old camp squad, but sacrifice to some obscure, lameass god sounds a lot more likely.”

“We’re getting sidetracked. C’mon Max, continue with your story.” Nikki persisted. 

“I’m just gonna take some notes so we can compile our data and shared knowledge on paper. It’ll be easier that way.” Neil added. “Alright, go.” 

Max rolled his eyes. He was still shaking, every fiber of his being screaming discomfort and anxiety. However, just like usual - it boiled down to a numb apathy. Something he could work with. 

“I talked to him, but I caught him doing something...weird, y'know? I mean, I shouldn’t be surprised, because he’s fucking psycho, but still. He had pliers, and it looked like he was pulling his own teeth out or something. Anyhow - he told me he’d kill me, best chance he got, but I think he was shitting me, because the night you guys came - well, remember, he had me down for a ‘checkup’? He was in this weird underground lab sorta thing, under the mess hall tent. It was dark and crowded with all of his bullshit. He coulda killed me then, but he didn’t. Instead…” 

Max looked away. 

He didn’t want to tell his friends about the fact that he’d tried to kill Salem on purpose. The fact that he  _ had _ killed Salem on purpose, just to try and protect them. 

But Daniel...well, a bunch of little kids didn’t stand a chance against a batshit crazy serial killer cultist. He almost killed them once, and they got off on pure luck. 

Max didn’t trust Lady Luck to favor their lives again. He needed to keep his friends out of it. 

“He gave me this,” Max continued, taking the stained machete from where it had been tucked into his pants. “Just fuckin’, gave it to me, right there. Said I was just gonna cause problems.” 

“That’s really fucked.” Nikki shook her head and leaned  back on the cot. “Like,  _ really _ fucked.” 

“That makes no sense. If he wants you dead, why would he give you a weapon?” 

_ Shit _ . In hindsight, Max could’ve said that he stole the machete, or wrestled it from another camper. Unfortunately, now he was forced to pull through on a very fine line between lies and truth.

“I think he wants me to try something with it, honestly. He kept goading me, tryna get me to hit him, stuff like that. I don’t know what’s going on inside his head, but I have a really shitty feeling about it. Fucking shit,” he growled. Nikki patted his shoulder.

“We’ll figure it out, Max. We’ve always done these things together.” She bit her thumbnail, voice high strung and excited. “We’re like the Scooby-Doo squad! Mysteries and monsters around every turn.” 

“The thing that concerns me is the existence of this camp in the first place,” Neil began. He flipped to a few particular pages in his notebook, looking over them with fresh disbelief. “These tents, these cots - there must have been a program, or something government mandated. There’s no way these nice, new things were set up after the fallout. There’s Daniel and Jen, or Mother Johanna and Father Darek, masquerading as Germans. Then there’s Pastor Jason, who hasn’t done anything but babysit. Undoubtedly, there’s more people to this operation.” 

“I’ve seen a few other adults around, but I’ve never seen them actually do anything.” Max added. Neil made a note, then continued.

“Right. None of the information that Jason gave Nikki and I seems to correlate with actual life here - there don’t seem to be many set activities or scheduling, just things that happen periodically. I’ve tried to talk with some of the other children, but I can’t seem to get anyone’s attention, and they don’t seem to want to talk. The only constant thing that happens every day is meals, and those don’t even have a set time. Additionally, even more absurd, the meals consist primarily of canned peaches and meat, the latter of which doesn’t make any sense in the slightest.”

“The ol’ canned peach warehouse!” Nikki exclaimed. Both Neil and Max gave her knowing looks. “Yeah, you guys remember! We snuck in there once. Nothing like a bunch of crazy rambunctious teens breaking into a huge abandoned factory building.”

Neil picked the train of thought up again, redirecting so that it was back on track. “You’re right. Figuring that Daniel makes various groups of children go out to find food, and Lingua is only a half hour’s hike or so away, I’m not surprised that peaches are a common contender on our dinner plates. What’s shocking is the meat.” He held his notebook up and outwards so that Nikki and Max could see it. On the page was a diagram that detailed the supposed layout of the Missionary camp. A gate surrounding long lines of stained white canvas tents. Large mess hall tent with the words _ Daniel’s Office _ underneath. Tucked behind, something of a working kitchen (Neil had scribbled in ‘ _ possible generator? _ ’ Underneath the label). 

“The counselor’s tents,” Max said dazedly, tracing a blank area behind the kitchen. “You don’t have the counselor’s tents.” 

Neil handed him his pen, a rare treasure. “Mark it in neatly.” 

Max did. Daniel and Jen’s were linked together, but separated - he’d seen it when pursuing Daniel out of the mess hall. And the back wall of tents, the entrances of which faced the kitchen tent, were most likely for the other counselors. Neil took a look at Max’s corrections and gaped.

“But - but, that gives us a contained square! Things make even less sense than before!” Neil gave Max an incredulous glance. “What I was  _ going _ to say is - how the hell are they, one, getting access to this meat, enough to serve for every meal, and two, where are they cooking and storing it? Unless there are more underground sections of the camp...but still! We’re six months into nuclear collapse. There’s not just livestock laying around, waiting to be slaughtered and eaten. Even if they had a hefty source of stored and preserved meat Prefall, this is clearly fresh stuff. Also, it’s been cooked over fire somehow, but the only firepit is smack dab out there-” -Neil motioned to the entrance of the tent, referring to the empty yard outside- “-and so far, I’ve never seen it lit.” 

“I agree. This setup can’t be Daniel’s. There are too many missing pieces, and this obviously wasn’t how the camp was made to function.” Max said. By this point, it was getting fairly dark outside, and Max’s clothes were no longer so wet. They held their shape and were uncomfortably hard, maybe, but at least they weren’t soaked like before. 

“What if he didn’t go to jail?” Nikki’s voice cut through the back and forth, catching the attention of both boys.

“It was  _ attempted murder _ , Nikki, of  _ course _ he went to jail!” Neil threw his hand outward, punctuating his point. “He tried to kill us! As well as a bunch of other children, for all we know!” 

Max stepped in with a look of sudden realization. “Wait, no, Neil - that’s exactly it.” He leveled a long look at the both of them. “We don’t know. We have no idea what happened after shit hit the fan. We don’t know if he got arrested or not, who he is, or how the hell his psycho brain works. Daniel, Darek - we don’t even know if either of those is his real name,” Max said, shaking his head dismissively. “Trying to pin down the intentions of a complete stranger…”

“-It’s like trying to find a paperclip in a pitch black room,” Neil breathed. Max nodded and continued. 

“All we really know is that he probably - no, definitely - wants to fuckin’ slaughter me.” 

There was a grave silence. 

“Why don’t we run away, then?” Nikki had a hand on her forehead, running through her dirty hair. “Look, I like risks, but there’s a limit. Staying here isn’t a cool or fun risk, it’s just a stupid idea. We could leave. Find David. Look for others. It’d be better than being sitting ducks, just waiting to be seized at the throat, here.” 

Brandishing his pen, Neil shook his head. “Ah - the odds that we will survive in a nuclear fallout zone are statistically much lower than even  _ you’d  _ want to take on, Nik.” He snapped his moleskine shut with two fingers. “We’ve only actually experienced the unknown for a few hours before being redirected to this camp. Earlier today was our first real taste of life outside, and during that half day we saw a poisonous bite, cut off a kid’s leg with a machete, continued to  _ kill  _ that child. Not to mention that we failed our original objective of finding food in the first place. This was maybe six or seven hours. That’s not nearly enough time to gauge the full extent to which we may be endangered while wandering. In this camp,  _ even if  _ we brand Daniel as a killer, we still have shelter, food, what I presume to be clean water, and to an extent-” -he looked at Max’s bloodstained attire and cringed- “-clothing.” 

Max opened his mouth to cut in, but Neil pushed forward. 

“Additionally, we know the threats that come with this camp, being Darek-slash-Daniel and Johanna-slash-Jen. If we keep an eye out, it may boil down to be more secure than leaving.” 

Silent, Max glared at the ground. Nikki’s expression was twisted with discomfort as if she had a stomachache or a bad taste in her mouth. “I don’t know, guys...this place, it...well, it gives me the heebie jeebies.” 

A sneer crossed Max’s lips, and he opened his mouth again to mock her loudly  _ (‘What are you, five?’ _ ) - but then his eyes dropped to his body, covered in someone else’s blood, and shut up again. He found himself agreeing with her half hearted expression of anxiety. Slowly, he went to talk. 

“That’s bullshit, Neil.” 

Neil gave him a look that was reminiscent of a slapped dog. Max ignored it.  

“Really. I’m not scared. David has his house and everything, it’s still standing. We could really survive there, it’s not that hard, I bet. But,” he looked at Nikki now, shaking his head again ever so slightly. “You guys haven’t been to the ‘orientation’ yet - they’re only on weekends, from what I’ve figured. We’re not allowed to leave.” Max gritted his teeth, grinding them with intense focus and frustration. “It doesn’t seem hard to just walk out, like, thinking that we could’ve left while raiding or whatever yesterday. At the risk of sounding like kind of a pussy, though, but Daniel would immediately hunt us down and kill us. I guarantee it. Not that I’m scared, I don’t give a single shit about death - but it’d be a dick move for me to pretend like we could get away with it and end up being responsible for y’alls deaths too.” 

His head swam. The more Max thought about it, the more that the situation felt dreamlike, unreal. Ha! The fuckin’ apocolypse. Stuck in a nightmare camp in a nightmare world, covered in someone else’s blood and sweat. He started shaking slightly with the pure exhaustion, physical and emotional, of the past day. The air felt too cold, then too hot. He could feel his friends’ empty stares on him. “I need to piss,” he muttered, getting up and shouldering his way out of the tent. 

There were a couple of designated places that you were supposed to use as bathrooms. This included a couple of moldy, reeking Porta-Potties that must’ve been there since the camp opened, Prefall. Max didn’t bother. It was dark out now, and he slipped out behind his tent and peed there. The top of his pants had been spared Salem’s blood, as his sweatshirt was wrapped around his waist and took most of the damage. He could hear Nikki and Neil still, their voices soft and too muted to make out through the thick canvas flaps. Max didn’t retie his hoodie - it was stiff with dried blood and not at all worth wearing anymore - so he discarded it on the ground, feeling oddly cold and empty for such a warm night. 

It was the cusp of summer, but the darkness held an unnatural and eerie silence where there should’ve been noise. Busy, night noises, like the wind throwing the leaves, rustling freely. The constant chirp of crickets and cicadas. An occasional birdcall, echoing throughout the canopies. Max’s ears searched for these, desperate to fill in that space, but -

there was nothing. 

Just quiet. 


End file.
